


Flashbacks

by wonderwhatthisbuttondoes



Category: Metalocalypse (Cartoon)
Genre: Friends to Lovers, Historical setting: late 1980's, M/M, Murderface wears Big Johnson t-shirts, Period Typical Attitudes, Post Snakes and Barrels AU: Dethklok never happens, Recreational Drug Use, Songfic, burned out rock star Pickles, everybody cusses, everybody drinks, loser with a menial job Nathan, occasional canon-typical violence, past much heavier drug use, recovering hard drug addict, well he would...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2018-12-09
Packaged: 2019-09-14 17:44:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 20,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16917399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wonderwhatthisbuttondoes/pseuds/wonderwhatthisbuttondoes
Summary: After the breakup of ‘Snakes and Barrels’, Pickles drops in on Nathan.





	1. Red Eye

**Author's Note:**

> Originally based on dead_unicorns’s ‘Daydreamklok’. She started this AU (Nathan/Pickles, and Dethklok the megaband never happens) and I (then writing as Otherhazards) spun this additional AU off it with her permission.

—

Pickles chewed the edge of his thumbnail, and stared out the window.  
Hazy green earth, clouds that passed above and below like racing yachts, and blue sky so bright it burned.  
A sudden flash of Technicolor geometric lines attacked his eyes out of a sunbeam glancing on the window frame.  Pickles grunted softly, and shut his eyes.  He watched the pattern burn itself out from Technicolor to white and then a really evil shade of blue before it faded into sparkles and disappeared.  
He’d had worse flashbacks.  
Pickles opened his eyes, spotted a  pretty blonde stewardess, and raised his hand.  
“Hey lady- -miss!  C’n I get another drink over here?”

“I don’t know, you’ve had three already…”    
…And a 7-UP bottle full of Bombay Sapphire…  
“It takes a lot more’n _that_ to get me drunk,” Pickles assured her with a winning smile.  
“One.  And that is IT, mister, we’re about to land.”  
“Make it a…  whadda they drink in Florida, anyway?”  
“In your case, ‘Sex on the Beach’.”  
“Eh- that sounds good.”

 

“Holy fuckin’ Christ…”  Pickles muttered, at the wave of not _quite_ liquid heat that met him as soon as he was clear of the terminal air conditioning.  
He looked up and down the taxi row, and scanned the busy sidewalks.  Nathan wasn’t there.  Why-  “…Oh yeah.  I fergat ta call ‘im.  Fuck.”  Pickles headed back into the terminal, and made the call.  
Nobody picked up.  Pickles swore, and slammed the receiver back down, missing the cradle and leaving the phone hanging.  No help for it now, he was in Florida.  
…Maybe he should just get a hotel.  
A quick montage of the hotel rooms he’d stayed in (and often destroyed) with Tony and the guys came back to him like a crackle of flashbulbs in his face.  
No, a hotel was out.  
Pickles looked down at the hand-sized scrap of laminated menu with Nathan’s phone number scrawled on it in permanent marker, and read the address printed below.  
He walked back outside into the jungle heat, and knocked the window of an idling cab.  It rolled down.  
“Where can I take you?”  
“That,”  Pickles said, pointing to the glossy menu-scrap,  “-right there.”

 

It was a big, irregular, eggnog-colored brick building with two stories and a painted cinderblock wall all around.  A teenager cruised by on his skateboard, and cast a bored glance at Pickles like a not-quite-hungry shark.  
Pickles squared his guitar case over his shoulder, and walked up to the gate.  
He found a handwritten, ‘GO AWAY’ on one of the nameplate slots in Nathan’s handwriting, and pressed the appropriate button.  Nothing happened.  
Pickles looked up and down the street nervously.  
It was no big deal, he’d just… hang here for a while.  No problem.  
After about fifteen minutes a Hispanic lady with a couple of kids came home with her groceries, and she had a key.  Pickles held the door for them, and slipped into the complex.  
Inside the wall the street traffic was muted, and a clump of scruffy-looking date palms stood in one corner of the courtyard.  
Pickles darted up the stairs, and found Nathan’s door without trouble.  -If he still lived there, anyway.  Pickles knocked, and got no answer.  
He bit his lip, and bounced on his toes a little.  
“Naythen?  You in there?”  he called.  
Nothing.  
An elderly black lady with her hair wrapped up in a multicolored scarf came out of an apartment two doors down and swept her portion of the walkway.  
They didn’t speak.  
Pickles stuck his thumbs in the waistband of his jeans, and leaned against the wall trying to look as if he belonged there.  Nathan’s neighbor gave him amused glance as she finished, and moved back into her own apartment.  
Pickles got bored.

 

Nathan got home around four, walked pointedly past the bank of mailboxes, and stopped.  
He turned around.  
“Hiya,”  Pickles waved to him from the edge of the pool, grinning.  
Nathan blinked, then came over to the edge of the pool and looked down into the water curiously, hands on his knees.  His rock star friend’s cheeks were red with welcome and sunburn, and his green eyes were dancing.  From Pickles’s point of view, Nathan’s shoulder-length black hair shadowed his face.  
“Pickles, what- -what are you DOING here?”  Nathan demanded.  
Pickles’s face fell, smoothing out into a defiant mask almost too fast to catch.  
“I figuhed I’d drop in.  See how you were doin’.  Does that offah still stand?”  
“Yeah.  Yeah it does,”  Nathan offered Pickles his hand, then paused.  “-What the hell are you wearing in my pool?”  
“-My undahwear?”  
“Good.  My landlord doesn’t like skinny-dipping.”  Nathan said approvingly, and hauled him out one-handed.

 

“So.  What’s new with you?”  Nathan asked, passing Pickles an opened beer and dropping onto the kitchen chair across the table from him.    
Pickles scratched his hair, and sighed.  
Nathan took a long pull on his own beer and waited, saying nothing.  
As if just remembering he was holding it, Pickles took a drink as well.  
“It’s bin so… SO fucked ap lately.  I mean seriously.  Fucked.  Everything…”  Pickles looked up from the  condensation rings he was making on the table.  “-How much do you already know?’  
“I uh- -I know Snakes and Barrels broke up.  That’s about it.”  
Pickles finished his beer, and pushed the bottle away from him regretfully.  
“You got anythin’ harder?”  
“Yeah,”  Nathan went to the fridge, and took an unopened bottle of jack out of the door.  He opened it, drank a shot straight from the bottle, and passed it to Pickles.  Somehow Nathan doubted the man would ask for a glass, and he was right.  
“It was drugs, man.  I can handle ‘em, but Tony an’ fuckin’ Candynose…  especially Candynose… he wuz soundin’ like a preschooler on ‘is mom’s _pans_ , dood.  It was fuckin’ pathetic…”  
The whiskey went down, and Pickles’s story poured out, punctuated by the occasional grunt or nod of understanding from Nathan.  
Pickles was sobbing on the worn tabletop by the time he finished.  He hadn’t meant to, but he also hadn’t had anything stronger than the whiskey in over eighteen hours, and he’d had to be _relatively_ clean to board the plane in Los Angeles the night before.  Pickles was crashing, hard.  
Nathan looked vaguely uncomfortable.  
He got up, and got another beer out of the fridge, for himself this time.  
He contemplated the wet sounds coming out from under the red, hairy lump on his kitchen table.  
He reached out his hand, then withdrew it.  
He thought about an all-night diner on the other side of town, and laughing green eyes rimmed with smudged black eyeliner.    
Nathan reached across the table and rubbed Pickles’s hair the way he would have petted a strange dog he didn’t altogether trust.  
The sniffling paused.  
“I’m gonna order Chinese,”  Nathan stated,  “-whadda you want?”


	2. Last Call

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nathan learns about living with a former rock star, and Pickles makes a hard choice.

—

“Can I touch it?”  Nathan asked.  
“Dood, it’s my guitar.  Fuckin’ _play_ it if you want.”  
“I- -don’t play anything,”  Nathan admitted.  He picked up the Les Paul gold top by it’s neck anyway, and lifted it reverently out of the case.  It felt like a toy, and looked like something out of a pirate’s treasure hoard.  
“I keep fergettin’ you’re a Snakes and Barrels fan,”  Pickles grinned, sitting on the edge of the bed to watch.  
Nathan snorted, running his fingers along the smooth-worn strings without plucking them.

Nathan woke up, and smelled something burning.  
Then the fire alarm went off.  
Nathan swore, and went in search of the reason.  
It turned out that Pickles had been trying to cook, and he’d burned the shit out of some eggs.  
“Why were you cooking them in the first place?”  Nathan demanded.  
“Isin’t that what you do with ‘em?”  
“No.  They’re for Prairie Oysters.”  
“…I’m gonna marry you,”  Pickles decided.

 

“You goin’ da work?”  
“Yeah,”  Nathan nodded, pulling on his other boot.  
“When da you get off?”  Pickles asked.  
“Not till five.”  
“I’m playin’ with some guys I met at the ‘Congo’ later.  It’s strictly informal, just drop in on the session, yanno?”  
“Are these guys playing straight?”  Nathan asked.  
Yeah, they’re cool.  An’ they gat really good hash.”  
“I’ll be there.”

 

“What is this place?”  Pickles asked, climbing through the broken window after Nathan.  
“Just some old factory.  It’s empty.”  
“Yeah, I kin see that.  Why are we here?”  
Nathan put both hands around his mouth, and roared.  There was just no other word for the sound.  It echoed off the peeling walls, the spray-painted windows, the rust-stained concrete floor, and came back at them like the shock from a car-bombing.  
Pickles stared at him.  
“What tha FUCK…?”  
“It’s the uh, sounds,”  Nathan explained, past the sheltering curtain of his hair.  “-The acoustic thing.  Try it.”  
Pickles cut loose with a shattering yell that started as low as he could take it, and ended on a high note.  It was _amazing_ , and the acoustics in the old factory were certainly good, but there was something missing.  Pickles glanced at Nathan, and saw that he’d noticed it to.  
“What am I doin’ wrong here?”  
“Uh… I don’t know.”  
“Do that again,”  Pickles instructed, with a ‘roll tape’ motion of his hand.  “-Yell, um, ‘fuck you Cleveland’.”  
“FUUUCCCK YOOOU CLEVELAAANDDDD!!!”  
“Huh,”  Pickles said, smiling thoughtfully.  “It ain’t the room, dood, it’s you.”  
“…Really?”  
“Yeah.  Can you do that in front of a crowd?”  
“I … I don’t know.  I’ve never tried.”  
“Well can ya TALK in front of a crowd?”  Pickles pressed.  
“Oh my god no,”  Nathan replied, with no hesitation whatsoever.  
“That’s too bad.  You gotta really wickid voice.”  

 

Pickles dropped two white tablets into amber fluid in his glass, swirled the mixture with a practiced flick of the wrist, and drank it off.  
“Are yoo ready YET?”  he called into the bedroom.  
“Yeah- hang on-“  -there was an echoing thud-  “-FUCK.”  
Pickles rolled his eyes, and re-filled his glass.

 

Nathan heard something, and switched on the bedside lamp.  
Pickles was crouched against the wall by the closet in his underwear, one hand clutching vaguely at his hair, and he was staring at the open bathroom door.  
“Pickles?”  
“…Nnagh?”  
“Are you okay?”  Nathan asked, calmly.  
“It’s Sinead, man,”  Pickles pointed a shaking finger at the empty doorway,  “…She _hates_ me.”  
“Sinead O’Conner?”  
“Naw, SINEAD, man…”  Pickles pointed again.  
“There’s nothing there, Pickles.  Who’s Sinead?”  
“I can’t I ca- she’s a fuckin’ ghost, man.  Attic apartment thing.  She’s fuckin’ dead an’ she- she…“  
“What did you take?”  
“What?”  
“I said, what did you take?”  Nathan repeated.  Somehow he’d crossed the room while Pickles was blinking, and now he as kneeling beside him, one large hand on Pickles’s bare back.  
“I donno, Tony…  I took _somethin’_ …”  Pickles’s head dropped tiredly against Nathan’s smoothly muscled shoulder.  
Nathan’s angular face hardened.  He left Pickles where he was, and got a glass of water.  
“You need to drink this,”  he said, pressing the glass into Pickles’s hand and closing his own hand over both.    
“Uh-?”  
“Drink it,”  Nathan ordered.  
“-Okey,”  Pickles agreed, hazily.  He put his other hand on the glass, and drank all but a little that spilled down his chest.  “Kinda bland,”  he muttered, darkly.  
Five minutes later he was puking his guts out in the bathroom.  
Nathan left him to it, and re-filled the glass.  

 

“AND THEN LIKE, SIRENS!!!”  
“Yeah, but then tha cop car’s PFFSHKRSSH!  -Gone!”  Pickles illustrated this with both hands.  
“BUT WHAT ABOUT THE BRIDGE?  WE GOTTA DO SOMETHIN’ WITH THE BRIDGE!”  Nathan reminded him.  
“Shut UP!”  somebody yelled out of a window from the other side of the apartment complex.  
“FUCK YOU, ASSHOLE!”  Nathan bellowed back.

 

Nathan woke up with an unfamiliar weight on his chest, and a few wisps of red hair tickling his nose.  He sneezed.  
Pickles shifted a little, then relaxed with a sleepy mumble.    
Nathan reached up a tentative hand, and ran it down Pickles’s back to mid-thigh without meeting cloth.  Nathan swallowed.    
He took stock of how Pickles felt there, of various sticky patches, and of the way his own body felt.  He raised his head, and took a deep breath in the warm red cloud of Pickles’s hair.  Booze, recent sweaty sex, a lingering hint of aftershave, and _very_ strong sunscreen.  
Nathan rumbled contentedly in the depths of his chest, curled one heavy arm around the small of Pickles’s back, and went back to sleep.

 

The hanging fluorescent lights gleamed off the bike’s long chrome fittings, and shone dully in the rich black leather.  Pickles straddled the bike backwards and explored Nathan’s mouth with his own, pressing, biting Nathan’s lower lip, stealing until they broke apart, breathless.  Nathan couldn’t keep his hands still.  One was cupped around the nape of Pickles’s neck, and the other was stroking against his back pocket.  
Pickles shifted against the bike’s seat, moving just to hear the leather squeak.  
Nathan put an end to this by scooping him up with an impatient noise, and stepping off the bike like it was an ordinary barstool.  Pickles thought about he way he couldn’t -touch- the ground with both feet at once on that bike, and locked his legs around Nathan’s waist with a hard squeeze.  
A moment later he was pressed up against the brick wall of the parking garage, staring at the bike over Nathan’s shoulder.  
“Clothes-“  Nathan managed,  “-we’re wearing too many clothes.’  
“I noo.  Lemmie down,”  Pickles agreed, pushing against Nathan’s chest to get his meaning through.  Nathan grazed the angle of Pickles’s neck and shoulder with his teeth, took a couple deep breaths, and let the other man down with a shuddering effort of will.  
Pickles was used to partially-dressed sex of one kind of another, but he wasn’t expecting Nathan to simply pick him up and -fold- him as soon as his pants were clear of his ass.  It was an odd position, putting his boots on either side of Nathan’s head, but while he couldn’t feel Nathan’s chest against his like this, the pressure of his folded legs put additional force on whatever Nathan chose to put inside him.  It was fingers at first, then more.  Pickles couldn’t catch his breath, and patterns of light danced and flickered behind his closed eyelids like heat-lightning.  This was like _cheating_.    
But DAMNED if it didn’t feel good…

 

Pickles held an icepack to the back of his head one-handed, and looked up with a weak grin as Nathan handed him a beer.  
“How’s your head?”  Nathan asked.  
“Eh- it still hurts.”  
“Do you always come like that?”  
“No…  Next time no brick wall, tho.”  
Nathan smirked, but dropped an apologetic kiss on Pickles’s messy red hair.

 

“How tha fuck did you get this number?”  Pickles demanded, angrily.  
Pause.  
“You had no right, man.”  
Pause.  
“Yes, I fuckin’ know that!”  
Pause.  
“No, you CAN’T.  An’ I don’t know where they are eithah, so go suck onna light socket, will you?”  
Pause.  
“He’s-“  
Short pause.  
“-I’ll fuckin’ kill you, Seth.”  
Pause.  
“No, don’t do that.  Don’t-“  
Pause.  
“…Yeah, I guess,”  Pickles sighed.  
Pause.  
“Don’ call me at this number again,”  Pickles ordered, and hung up.

“-You in there?”  Nathan asked, waving a hand in front of Pickles’s dilated eyes.  
“Whadda you guys want?”  Pickles asked, looking vaguely up at him.  
“Whoa.  You are _burned_.”  
“Not yet, but the muthafucker always gets around t’it…”  
“-Who?”  Nathan blinked.  
“Did you know you’ve got really, really dark eyes?”  
“They’re _green_ , Pickles.  Like yours.”

 

Smoke lay in a pulsing haze over the crowd, and cleared in eddies around the air vents.  Pickles stood onstage and he played, feet apart, fingers dancing through the chords and inversions.  Sweat shone on his face and arms, and soaked into the folded black bandanna holding back his hair.  Old stuff, new stuff, shit he’d never shown anyone poured out of him like heat off a racing engine, and the drummer on stage behind him kept up as best he could.  -Marcus had been having a hell of a night since the set started, but keeping up with a guitarist this good for this long was beginning to smooth out into an adrenaline high he didn’t mind at all.  Pickles, he suspected, was on at least two hits of speed on top of that.

Nathan watched Pickles light both cigarettes, and hand him one.  The musician’s hands shook slightly as he put the lighter away, but then it seemed to fade.  
“So,”  Pickles began, exhaling smoke in a sigh,  “How’s work?”  
“It’s really lame.  I think I’m gonna quit,”  said Nathan, leaning his hands on the railing.  
“Mph.  G’d idea,”  Pickles nodded, watching the headlights of the cars passing on the street below.  
“I’m not good at very much though…”  Nathan began, unhappily.  
“What about when you were concert security?”  Pickled pointed out.  
“That was just a gig, Pickles.  It can’t happen every day.”  
“Then why don’t you bounce?  Lose the lame daytime hours, an’ get paid ta look scary.”  
“You think?”  
“Oh, _yeah_.  I wouldn’ wanna fight you.”  
“You’re half my size.”  
“I’m a little more’n _that_ , but I get what you’re sayin’.  -And fer the record I could break your kneecaps,”  said Pickles.  
Nathan smiled, and took a drag on his cigarette.

 

When Nathan got home the apartment was silent, but Pickles’s red boots were on the floor by the bed, and he was nowhere to be seen.  
Nathan’s heart began to beat fast.  
He mentally told it to shut up, and looked in the bathroom, the closet (which was for reasons unknown to both of them Pickles’s favorite place to pass out when he was high) and then Nathan found him on the kitchen floor.  
“Pickles?”  
Nothing.  
Nathan turned the redhead over, and checked to see if he was breathing.  Pickles was, but not by much.  His pupils were blown out to thin green rings around pools of black, and his skin felt clammy.  As Nathan held him, pickles started to shake.  
“C’mon babe, don’t do this…”  
Pickles couldn’t hear him.

 

“Dr. Karl, please call 1601.  Dr. Karl, 1601.”  
Pickles opened his eyes.  His head ached, his throat felt raw, and there was an IV of clear liquid going into his left arm.  Cautiously, he took a breath and looked around.  
Pickles’s eyes met Nathan’s, and stopped.  
He didn’t recognize the look in them, but he knew Nathan looked really, really tired.  
“Can you hear me?”  Nathan asked, flatly.  
Pickles nodded.  
“Good.  Do you understand what I’m saying?”  
Pickles paused, then nodded again.  
“I’m only gonna say this once.  I want you to live with me, but you’ve got to cut out the hard drugs.  You almost fucking died Pickles, and I’ll be damned if I watch that again.  That’s uh, that’s all I have to say.”  
Nathan stood.  
Sudden tears pricked in the corners of Pickles’s eyes, and he couldn’t stop them.  
Maybe Nathan saw and maybe he didn’t, but he turned away quickly, and left.

 

Waves hissed up the pale gray sand, and the breeze sighed in the salt-sedges.  
Pickles sat on a wooden bench facing the water, arms folded.  The only evidence left of where he’d spent the night was a fresh band aid in the angle of his left elbow.  He shut his eyes and listened.  Overhead, the palm leaves rustled.  
Deep down he didn’t really believe he’d almost died to night before.  He HAD overdone it a little and scared the fuck out of the only real friend he had left, but almost dying?  Nah.  
…But he had scared Nathan.  Scared him badly enough…  
Damn, he didn’t wanna lose Nathan.  It would probably happen sooner or later, or if Seth didn’t keep his forked tongue silent, but it shouldn’t happen over…  
But… DRUGS.  
Pickles had control over this.  He could lose Nathan right now, or not.  
Nathan had said nothing about alcohol or weed, and THAT wasn’t a hard drug.

    
…Were mushrooms hard drugs?  
A couple of kids on rollerblades skated past, then stopped and came back.  
“Dude, he IS-“  
“Then YOU ask him.”  
“Hey, um,”  one of the kids began,  “-aren’t you Pickles from Snakes an Barrels?”  
“Yeah, that’s me,”  Pickles said, smiling in spite of himself.  They were what… sixteen?  seventeen?    
The kid grinned, and ducked behind the blonde fringe of his sun-bleached hair to exchange a word with his friend.  
“Would you mind signing my t-shirt?”  
“-And my skate?”  
“You guys gotta pen?”  
“I’ve got a marker,”  the second kid offered, digging out a black, fat-tipped tagger’s special.  
“Sure, why not?”  Pickles grinned, and took the marker from him.

 

Nathan sat cross legged on the bed, correcting what he’d written in a stitch-bound composition book.    
‘Banshee in the darkness,  
The ghost in the hall,  
I know a way to kill them all.  
Let me come inside you,  
Let me be your d-‘  
“Neythan?”  Pickles called, from the open door.  
Nathan looked up sharply, and left his song face down on the bed.  
“Yeah?”  
“…I’m gonna try.”  
Nathan drew Pickles inside without a word, and kissed him senseless.


	3. Gatorade

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> PWP-ish. Post-S&B Pickles is living with Nathan in Florida and trying to cut out the hard drugs. Nathan’s helping.

—

( ****Rock you like a Hurricane-Scorpions)

Pickles watched the last rays of the sun slip behind the palms that grew along the apartment complex’s outer wall, and took a deep drag on his cigarette.  He leaned his arms on the thin metal railing that bordered the second-story walkway, and watched the streetlights come on.  
They’d done that in L.A. too, but he’d never once watched.  
A light wind was blowing out towards the bay now, but the Florida heat still rose from the streets and sidewalks like a thing alive.   As the lights of the pale-stuccoed complex itself came on with the approaching dusk, the tiny frogs that always seemed to find their way into the drains of the swimming pool in the court below sent up a tentative chorus.  
Pickles smiled, and stubbed out his cigarette on the metal railing.  
He was getting antsy, but he tried not to acknowledge it.

  
He glanced at his guitar, leaning against the wall in one corner of the sparsely-furnished room.  He opened the door of the refrigerator, and stood with his eyes shut in the cool wave that spilled out.  He tried not to think about the small vial of pills he had hidden in the freezer, less than a foot away, and failed.  
Pickles set his teeth with a snarl, grabbed a bottle of Gatorade off the top shelf, and slammed it in one shot.  
Then he shut the door, and curled up in a ball on the bed.  
Pickles’s slashed jeans creaked faintly in the humidity, and the sheer material of his pale green tank top stuck to his back unpleasantly.  
Pickles watched a pair of legs ending in flip-flops walk slowly by the door he’d left open earlier.  He ran a hand over his cascade of red hair, and snarled his fingers in a tangled patch on one side.  He tugged at it, and frowned.  
Pickles made a mental note to comb the whole mess out with conditioner in the shower sometime, then changed his mind and decided to do it NOW.  It would be something to do, at least…

 

The water was cool.  Pickles stood under the spray, just soaking up the temperature for a while.  Then he got down to business, doing each task deliberately, completely.  The hair itself sucked, but even teasing was no match for the large conditioner bottle _Pickles_ kept on hand.  Finally it poured through his fingers like a smooth and faintly scratchy liquid.  Pickles frowned at the sizeable snarl of red hair left behind on his comb, but wrote it off as well-deserved split-end damage.     
The shower beat pleasantly against the scattering of freckles across Pickles’s shoulder blades (the little bastards had been breeding there ever since he’d arrived in Florida) and his hand drifted downwards.  As his fingers closed around his stiff cock, his lips parted silently.  Pickles let his mind go perfectly blank, and just focused on that one sensation.  He didn’t try to pretend his hand was anyone else’s, or seek for a fantasy, he just shut his eyes tight, and let the sensations come.  
It was good, and messy, and over _far_ too quickly.  Pickles smiled ruefully, and washed up in the last of the warm water.

 

He was still toweling off his hair when Nathan got home.  
Pickles dropped the towel, and pounced.  
They hit the door, slamming it shut with an almighty crash.  
Nathan laughed, and let himself get kissed silly.  He folded his large hands under the redhead’s bottom to hold him in place, thumb stroking thoughtfully against faintly damp white cotton briefs.  
“GADDAMN, I missed you!”  Pickles declared, finally coming up for air and bracing his hands on Nathan’s shoulders.  
“Couldn’t wait, could you?”  Nathan observed, with a very wicked look.  
“No but I could totally go again you wanna?”  
“Well, when you put it that way…”  
Nathan crossed the room quickly, and dropped Pickles off on the on the edge of the bed.  He had his t-shirt and jeans off in record time, and Pickles tackled him as soon as he set foot on the bed.  They wrestled there for a few moments, then fell off the far edge of the bed with a thud.  
Nathan bit his lower lip, and wished he hadn’t landed on his knees.  
“…Y’okay, Neythan?”  
“You’re the one on the bottom.”  
“Oh, you landed on- -poor baby.  I got tha cure for that, c’mon-”  
They picked themselves up, and Pickles pushed the bigger man carefully back onto the bed, straddling his hips.  Nathan reached up and ran his hands along the faintly cool and slick skin of Pickles’s back, drawing him down into another kiss.  
“-Relax,”  he rumbled against Pickles’s ear, when they broke.  
“I can’t, I-“  
“Shh…”  Nathan insisted, sucking the hollow at the base of Pickles’s throat.  The short red beard and stubble scratched against the skin of Nathan’s forehead, foreign and familiar at the same time, and Pickles’s breath was hot in his hair.  
They were both men, but Pickles was a different animal.  Nathan delighted in this, the way the violently red hair would feather when it was dry like the edge of some exotic fabric, and the way those compact muscles would bunch, becoming hard and tight from smooth in less than a thought.  The way he could almost circle the redhead’s waist with his hands, and oh god, the _freckles_ …  
Nathan ghosted his teeth across the skin of Pickles’s shoulder, and purred.  
Pickles made an undignified whimper and leaned off to the side, scrabbling for the tube of KY that had been haphazardly stuffed between the pillows the night before.  He had it.  
Pickles fisted Nathan with one slick hand, and eased back onto him, spine arching slowly.  
“…Don’t you want me ta-“  
“I kin do it.  Shaddap, just shadda- -oh!- -OoooaH, _JEZUS_ …”  Pickles moaned, as he slid all the way down.  
Nathan stroked his back slowly, and said nothing.  
Pickles stopped moving, hands braced splay-fingered against Nathan’s wide, smooth chest.  His eyes were lidded, and only a faint glitter showed beneath them.  
“Okay…”  Pickles said, opening his eyes to fevered green,  “-okay, ahm good…”   
“DAMN this feels amazing,”  Nathan breathed, hands sliding down to rest around Pickles’s wiry hips.   
“Oh yea?  Watch _THIS_ …”  Pickles grinned, and began to move.

 

There were no words for it.  
Nathan didn’t think of himself as good with words in any case, but the vision of Pickles, _PICKLES_ by all that was unholy, bucking and writhing above him to a tune that only HE could hear, playing his own pleasure _ON_ Nathan until it was no longer clear who was the instrument…    
Nathan took a better grip on Pickles’s hips, and began amplifying his movements, half-lifting him, bringing him down into short, sharp thrusts that left the redhead keening and panting his name in half-syllables.  
Nathan was being burned alive, dick first.  The hot, clenching, rippling darkness that rode him would not let go.  It was like death.  It was like having alcohol injected into his brain.  It was AWESOME.  
Pickles’s fingers tightened around Nathan’s shoulders, scratching the skin when they slipped on the sweat that had built between them, knuckles and callused fingertips bled white.  
Nathan reached around further, kneading Pickles’s ass like a huge cat, spreading him and drawing him forwards.  Pickles was out of words too now, and each soft, harsh pant seemed to have the edge of a scream lurking in it.  His red hair swung in trailing strips around his slick, flushed face, a fine lace of it stuck to his skin like bloody cobwebs.  Nathan held him up just enough, and quickened his deep, punishing thrusts, growling low in the back of his throat.  
Pickles felt the full length of his partner taken away, and in its place a carefully-aimed striking that burst into flames.  It strobed, then pulsed through the edge of his sanity, and detonated in pleasure.  Pickles screamed, filled his lungs and screamed again, unwittingly lashing Nathan across the face with the still-wet whips of his hair as he came.

 

It was two AM when Nathan woke up to raid the fridge.  He ate all the leftover mac ‘n cheese cold, and then made himself a sandwich.  Nathan filled a plastic cup with Gatorade, and opened the freezer for some ice.  He found the tray by feel, and then felt under the Otter-pops for something else.  
The vial was still there.  
Nathan finished his sandwich.  He wiped the crumbs off with the back of his hand, and took the drink back to bed with him, setting it on the nightstand.  Nathan leaned over Pickles in the dark, and pressed an oddly reverent kiss against his cheek.  
He got no response.  Pickles was out cold on his back with a contented look on his face, one arm curled in the twisted sheets above his head.  
“Thanks, babe…”  Nathan whispered.

 

-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: I actually wrote THIS one first, and had to write ‘Red Eye’ and ‘Last Call’ to get BACK here…


	4. Blackbird

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Post-S&B Pickles is living with Nathan in Florida and getting his life together. Nathan brings up the past, and lives to regret it.

—

(You Give Love a Bad Name-Bon Jovi)

“I haven’t smoked this much weed since grade school,”  Pickles sighed, studying the joint in his hand happily.  
Nathan took the joint over Pickles’s shoulder and drew the hot, dark smoke into his own lungs.  It wasn’t really black, but until he exhaled Nathan always pretended it was.  
“Yanno, I’ve been over, an OVER the albums you got here-”  Pickles motioned to the scattering of Snakes and Barrels records spread out on the carpet in front of him,  “-an’ I _still_ can’t figure out what I was doin’ wrong.  I mean, we were ALL pretty good back then, but it still sounds like…  I dunno…  unplugged or summthin’?  …What is it that I’m tryin’ ta say here?”

  
Nathan cleared his throat.  
“You’re, ah- -you’re looking for a sound.”  
“Yeah.  That’s it exactly.  I’m lookin’ for a sound.  …What sound?”  
“I have no idea,”  said Nathan,  “-wanna go out looking for it?”  
“Whet, NOW?”  
“Yeah.  Right now,”  Nathan nodded.  
“Yer dangerous when you’re high, ya knew that?”  
“Come on, do you wanna go or not?”  Nathan  pressed.  
“Okey,”  Pickles grinned.  He stood up, kissed off the ember of the joint, and dusted off his hands.  
THUD.  
Pickles turned to see Nathan looking up at him from the floor with a startled look in his red-rimmed eyes.  
“-Right now?  Yer sure?”  Pickles asked, scratching his head.  
“I’m fine.  I’ll, uh, I’ll walk this off,”  Nathan promised, not moving.  
“Riiite.  I’m gonna… I’ll go see what’s in the fridge,”  Pickles decided, pointing.  
“…If there’s cheese, I want some,”  Nathan decided.  
“Okey, sure,”  Pickles smiled back at him.

 

Nathan sat up in bed, eyes wide and staring in the near-darkness, breaths ragged and fast.  
He buried his face in his hands, and groaned softly.  
“…*… …Nayt’n?”  Pickles asked, his voice scratchy with sleep.  
“I just had a dream that you shot me in the chest,”  Nathan said, without preamble.  
“Hrmn,”  Pickles sat up, frowning.  He reached over and stroked the back of Nathan’s hair, dipping just the tips of his fingers through the smooth, heavy strands.  
“Why’d I do that, Nate?”  Pickles asked, patiently.  
“You were robbing a liquor store.  Where I was working, I mean.”  
“So what, you tried ta stop me?”  
“No.  I gave you what you wanted, and then you smiled, and shot me.”  
“Okey, that’s pretty fuckin’ weird.”  
“Yeah, I know.  Don’t take this too serious.  It’s just, uh…  I have really weird dreams,”  Nathan shrugged, uncomfortably.  
“Yeah, but ME shootin’ you in the CHEST?”  Pickles pointed out.  
“HAVE you ever shot anybody in the chest?”  Nathan demanded.  
“Naht in a liquor store, I haven’t!”  
Silence.  
“Have you ever shot anybody in the chest?”  Nathan repeated, quietly.  
“…Yeah.  I don’t wanna talk about it.”  
“Was it Sinead?”  
Pickles jerked as if he’d been slapped.  
“No.  It wasn’t.  An’ fuck YOU, ya dumb douchebag-“  
He got up quickly, swiped his jeans off the floor, and began pulling them on, muttering darkly to himself.  
Nathan hit the light, and it didn’t improve the situation.  
“Hey, wait a minute-!”  
“Nope.  You have really pissed me tha fuck off,”  Pickles replied without looking.  He pulled his sleeveless black shirt on over his head.  
“Pickles, you KILLED somebody.  I don’t CARE, I just wanna _know_ about it…”  
Pickles stopped, though his back was still to the bed.  
“If I tell you about tha guy I shot, Will you lay the fuck off about Sinead?”  
Nathan hesitated, then nodded.  
“-Yeah.”  
“A’right.  …But I’ll tell ya when I get back, because I am REALLY fuckin’ pissed.”  
Pickles disappeared out into the damp Florida night, and the door shut behind him, hard.  
Nathan flopped back against the bed with a sigh, and threw an arm across his eyes.  
“-FUCK.”

 

Nathan stood square to the overpass railing, staring down at the lights below.  He could see a good deal of the night-time city from here, and endless lines of Human ants speeding through the darkness in glowing lines of red and white.  
Nathan weighed the rock in his hand, and a soft breeze blew through his hair, barely lifting it.  
What was it like to kill somebody?  
What would he feel, five minutes from now?  
There were so many of them…    
Traffic moved in waves, Nathan saw.  First the speeders, then more, and finally the stragglers, like urban buffalo.  Here and there the smaller forms of motorbikes threaded their way through the commuter herd in packs, like lean steel wolves.  
Nathan held the rock in both hands.  He’s found it an hour ago, in a dry gutter by the side of the road.  A scarred, dusty gray missile, almost -exactly- the same size as a football minus the points.  Like he’d been meant to find it.  
Nathan’s eyes snapped open, though he couldn’t remember having closed them.  He chose the first car his eyes focused on, and raised the rock over his head.  
And then he brought it down with incredible force on the concrete railing and _stopped_ , holding it there hard like the stone would try to squirm out of his grasp.  
Nathan sighed, and felt a cold sweat break out on his skin.  
What would he feel, five minutes from now?  
“Like a fuckin’ pussy, that’s what,”  Nathan muttered, feeling chokingly disappointed and oddly relieved at the same time.  
Crack.  
Nathan stared down at his hands.  The rock was still there, but clean through the concrete beneath it a pair of long cracks were racing downwards.  Nathan yanked the rock away, then dropped it on the overpass, and stumbled backwards.  
A few crumbs fell like the first drops over a dam, and then a full ten foot length of the steel-and-concrete railing gave way.  Nathan saw it disappear, then heard the ear-splitting clash of metal, asphalt and shattering glass below.  All the lights on the overpass went out.  
He heard the long steel railing rebound with a deep, wavering clang, strike ground again, and finish in a screeching of brakes and tearing sheet metal.  
Nathan stood on the overpass in the dark, arms loosely at his sides, and heard each successive smash, each fainter than the last.  
The soft Southern wind lifted a strip of Nathan’s hair, and brushed it across his hard, silent face as he listened.

 

“Nice bike,”  said Pickles, raising his sunglasses,  “-where’d ya get it?”  
“That’s uh- that’s a long story,”  Nathan wiped the last of the water off the shiny black gas tank with one of his old shirts.  On the side Pickles couldn’t see, the Harley’s paint and chrome work had the long, shallow scratches of having been recently ‘laid down’.  The ones in the paint he was planning to spay-paint over, but the chrome would have to go-  
“Yeah, well, you might wanna switch the plates,”  Pickles said, helpfully.  
Nathan looked up, and pinned Pickles with his eyes.  
“Where have you been?”  
Pickles sighed, and drew on his cigarette before answering.  
“Da you really wanna know about that guy that- yanno…”  
“Yeah.  I do.”  
“He broke in backstage one night ta steal our gear, an’ he found me.  Bullets kept a forty-five loaded in this big old guitar case ‘e had.  Tha dood wouldn’ back off, so I did what had ta be done.  End of fuckin’ story,”  Pickles laughed a little, but the sound was hollow.  
“…Oh.”  Nathan let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding, and read between the lines.    
He saw the scared teenager Pickles had been not so very long ago, and he knew what kind of thief it would take to ignore the threat of a drawn gun.  
He considered the phrase, ‘-an he found me’.  
Nathan stood, and dropped the wet t-shirt in the bucket of soapy water at his feet.  
“So, uh… are we good?”  he asked.  
Pickles considered that.  
“We will be when ya tell me where you gat that bike,”  Pickles said, waving his cigarette-hand at it.  
“…Let’s get a beer,”  Nathan nodded, after the briefest of pauses.

 

“These guys _suck_ ,”  Pickles said, sourly.  
Nathan shrugged his shoulders, and watched the band on stage.  They were METAL, and that was good enough for him.  Now that the subject had been raised, however…  
“Suck how?”  
“You want me ta start with the lead guitar’s flat ‘A’, or the way the singer’s tryin’ ta dress like his holiness Ronnie Dio?”  
“I thought you liked Dio.”  
“I _DO_ ,”  Pickles growled.  
“Okay, how would you do it different?”  Nathan asked.  
“Fire the fuckin’ lead and get a real one.  Book the drummer some practice time, ‘cause the kid ain’t bad, an’ uh,”  Pickles took a swallow of his drink, considering,  “…take tha singer out back and beat on ‘im for a while.”  
“Would that work?”  
“Are you kiddin’ me?  You wanna know what CANDYNOSE used to wear before we worked ‘im over?”  
“…I think I’ll pass,”  Nathan decided.

 

Pickles darted up the fire-stairs, laughing.  
Nathan was well over a flight down, and _not_ gaining.  He wasn’t showing any signs of giving up though, and Pickles was almost out of stairs.  
…Darn.  
Pickles banged through the red roof-access door, slid on the gravel, changed direction, and flattened himself around the corner.  Nathan charged through the door after him four beats later, skidded to a stop, and looked around the roof slowly, searching and catching his breath.    
Pickles tried not to breathe.  
Nathan glanced down at the boot-marks in the gravel, smiled with intent, and walked quickly around the stair entrance.  Pickles -almost- took off in time.  
Nathan pulled him in by his wrist, and set Pickles’s shoulders firmly against the wall with a dull metallic clang.  Pickles grinned at him.  
“Okey, you win.  Open the bottle.”  
Nathan took the freshly-shaken-up-ten-flights-of-stairs champagne bottle from Pickles, and seriously considered chucking it.  
Instead, he popped the cork over one shoulder with his thumb like the cap of a beer bottle, and   
turned the spray on Pickles.  
“AH, ch- -ist!  Y- -mot- -erFU- -KER!” Pickles choked, through the champagne fire hose.

 

Out over the city, early fireworks were going off like sporadic crackles of gunfire.  Nathan sat on a long, low air conditioning duct, while Pickles dripped champagne on his shoulder.  
“Well, it’s almost 1988.  What are your regrets?”  Nathan asked.  
“My _regrets?"_  Pickles repeated, questioningly  
“Yeah.  New years resolutions are lame.”  
“Oh- well my fuckin’ BAND breakin’ up, for one.”  
“What else?”  Nathan asked.  
“I regret…”  Pickles looked up into Nathan’s eyes, and a crooked grin spread over his face,  “…thet’s about it, actually.”  
Nathan caught his breath.  
He leaned in for a kiss, but quick as he was Pickles was faster, and a small, clever hand covered Nathan’s mouth.  
“NAHT new years.  Sixtyy more seconds, dood.  Quick, what’s yers?”  
“My what?”  
“Your regret!  …Jeez what’ve I gotta-”  
I regret I can’t sing with you.  
I regret I’m destroying something beautiful just by BEING with you.  
I regret I can’t warn you.  
I regret I can’t play anything.  
I regret that I’m generally a loser.  
I regret that time I surprised you in the shower, and you slipped.  
I re-  
“Thirty _seconds_ dood, FUCK!”  Pickles interrupted, pounding on his shoulder insistently.  
“I regret that I don’t have your tolerance.”  
“ _I_ don’t.  Naythen, have you gat any IDEA what a cheap stone you are?  That’s a _gift_ , man…”  
“FUCK -YOU-.”  
“I’m jest sayin’-“  
From below, a wave of concentrated noise began to build…  
NINE…  
EIGHT…  
SEVEN…  
SIX…  
FIVE…  
FOUR…  
“Can I kiss you now?”  
“A’most.”  
TWO…  
O-  
Pickles grabbed the back of Nathan’s head and kissed him fiercely, swinging around to sit backwards across Nathan’s lap.  Nathan crushed him closer, eyes shut and hands fisted in the champagne-soaked black material of Pickles’s cutoff shirt.

 

“We are almost outta champagne,”  Pickles noted, holding up the bottle.  
“Mm?”  
“Much as you like ta make it last by suckin’ it out of my shirt, this bottle IS almost empty.”  
“Then we got one more thing to do,”  Nathan said, sitting up and tucking his dark hair back behind one ear.  
“Whet?”  
“We gotta drink to you staying clean for two months.”  
Pickles looked down, and bit his lip.  
“When?”  Nathan asked, flatly.  
“Three weeks ago.  …I did some lines at a party,”  Pickles admitted.  
Nathan thought for a moment, then raised Pickles’s whiskered chin in his hand.  With his other hand, he gently took the bottle.  
“Three weeks is still somethin’, babe,”  he said,  “-butjustforthatI’M drinkin’it-”  
-And he did.  
“-HEY!!!”

 

Pickles walked along a rusting white-painted steel I-beam, arms out for balance and a look of eager concentration on his face.  Nathan waited tensely at the head of the stairs, arms folded.  
Pickles reached the other end of the beam, took the cigarette out of his mouth with one hand carefully, and blew a perfect smoke ring before taking a grip on the vertical beam in front of him.  
“You know you wanna,”  he grinned back at the head of the stairs.  
“Fuck,”  Nathan muttered.  He did NOT want to screw around on a steel beam forty feet above a concrete floor.  
Nathan took a breath, and climbed up onto the near end of the beam.  He eyed the madman on the other end of the beam and started walking, slowly and deliberately.  Nathan looked neither right, nor left, nor up, and DEFINITELY not down.  
He reached Pickles, and they had to stand sideways to both keep one hand on the vertical beam.  
Pickles let go, and wrapped his arms around Nathan’s waist underneath the warm envelope of his black t-shirt.  One of Nathan’s hands tightened suddenly on the vertical beam, but his free hand reached up to tangle itself in Pickles’s thick red hair.  
Nobody said anything.

 

“Sonovawhoore, that’s not it either,”  Pickles snarled, ejecting a tape from his tape player and chucking it into a cardboard box filled with dozens of others.  
“How many more bands ARE there?”  Nathan asked, looking over his shoulder.  
“I’m gonna find that sound, Naythen,”  Pickles asserted,  “-jus’ watch me.”  
“Yeah, I know…”  Nathan frowned, and looked away quickly as Pickles slipped his headphones back on.


	5. Indian Head

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Post-S&B Pickles is living with Nathan in Florida and searching for ‘the sound’, but neither one is really sure of where he stands…

—

Pickles watched each successive act take the stage, and sank lower and lower in his chair.    
“You had the Long Island, right?” an angel of mercy with fishnets on under her black spandex shorts interrupted.  
Pickles looked up from his dark musings, and brightened.  
“Oh, yeah.  Thet’s mine-”  he cuddled the drink she’d placed at his elbow nearer, cherishing it.  
“That’ll be three fifty,”  she smiled.  
Pickles slid her a five.  The waitress plunked his change down efficiently and turned, as another table shouted for a round of rum and cokes.  
“Keep tha change lady, jest start me a-“  -Pickles was talking to himself.  He trailed off, and shrugged philosophically.   
One of the coins caught Pickles’s eye, and he examined it more closely.  …A silent whistle formed on his lips.

“Holiee _shit_ …”  Pickles grinned, turning it over in his fingers.  This was a no-kidding, genuine buffalo nickel.  The whole coin was pleasantly smooth to the touch, and the date on the Indian-head side had been worn clean off, but the word ‘Liberty’ was still just legible along the rim in front of the Indian’s eyes.  
Pickles held up the coin so that the side of his thumb covered up the Indian’s braided hair and feathers, leaving only his patient, strongly angular face visible.  
Pickles’s grin faded into a private little smile, and he hid the worn coin in his hand before anyone else noticed it.

 

“Naythen?”  
“Yeah?”  
“Where’s my Iron Maiden t-shirt?”  
“In the wash.”  
“Ya mean, right now?”  
“Yeah, why?”  Nathan asked, defensively.  
“Nathin’, I just…  I didn’t realize you-“  Pickles began.  
“WHAT THE FUCK IS YOUR PROBLEM?!”  Nathan demanded.  
“Um… can I shut up and we pretend this conversation neveh happened?”   
“Uhh… yeah, we can do that.”  
“Cool.  So ah, whadda you wanna do t’night?”  
“Let’s get drunk and make out in the pool,”  Nathan decided.  
Pickles smirked up at his friend, green eyes glittering wolfishly.  
“-Heh.”  

 

Pickles sat alone in the apartment, playing his guitar with the volume knob turned down to two.  
It came easy, some parts easier than others, and none of it satisfied him.  He played his songs, and Tony’s songs, and the one Bullets wrote.  He played Aerosmith, Led Zepplin, and Black Sabbath.  He played things he’d forgotten the names of.  He played without singing.  He played…  
Pickles unplugged his guitar abruptly with a screech of static, and threw it away from him onto the unmade bed.  
It skipped once, teetered on the far edge of the mattress for a moment, then fell to the floor with a twang of vibrating strings that made Pickles wince.  
Pickles stood with his back to the wall, jaw set, fists shaking at his sides.  
It wasn’t supposed to be like this.  
He was OVER this…  
Slowly, almost unwillingly, Pickles’s feet took him the twelve steps to the linen closet just outside the bathroom, and stopped him there.  
Pickles swallowed hard, and leaned his sweating forehead against the white-painted wood.  He would not open this door.  
He opened it anyway.  
Inside, piles of his and Nathan’s shit were stuffed onto the more accessible shelves, balled-up clean towels, Nathan’s old broken stereo, twelve Bombay Sapphire bottles, each filled with sand from a different beach…  and on the top shelf, a rolled-up blue towel, thicker and heavier than it should have been.  
Pickles licked his lips, and squeezed his fists together so tight he could feel the imprints of his short fingernails becoming painful.  
Suddenly he jumped up, grabbed the rolled-up blue towel off the shelf, and sank down onto the carpet, clutching it against his chest, hard.  
He could _hear_ the small bottles and plastic wrap crunching together inside.  
Pickles sat cross-legged on the floor, with the blue bundle in his lap.  He touched it, carefully.  The blue terrycloth roll was tied shut with several bands of almost invisible hair, alternating between red and black.  
Pickles remembered the day he’d made this roll with Nathan.  The shining pile of drugs, white against the dark material of the towel, the look of quiet concentration on Nathan’s face as his big fingers had somehow knotted Pickles’s long red hairs to his own thicker black ones…  
There were three such strings, and one of them was broken.  
Nathan would know.  Nathan would KNOW he’d been fucking with it.  
Nathan… might forgive him.  …He probably would.  He…  
But FUCK, he’d KNOW…!  He’d…  
Crinkle.  
Pickles bit his lip and whimpered, staring at the dark blue roll in his lap.

 

Nathan came home at three forty-five, and something felt wrong.  He switched on the overhead light.  All the bedclothes had been torn off the bed hard enough to pull the mattress partway off the box spring, and it looked like a narcotics piñata had gone off just outside the bathroom.  
“God DAMMIT…”  Nathan snarled, shutting the door behind him quickly.  
A faint, startled noise from the other side of the wrecked bed caught his attention, and Nathan’s pale green eyes narrowed dangerously.  
He flipped the mattress like a pissed off drill sergeant, and stared down at the ball of tightly-clutched sheets revealed on the floor in front of him.  
The ball whimpered, unhappily.  
Grimly and methodically, Nathan pried the sheets away from his fucked-up druggie boyfriend.  Pickles clung to his cocoon like a hung-over silkworm until Nathan had him partway unwrapped, and then he wouldn’t look up.  
Nathan placed his hands on either side of Pickles’s jaw, warningly.  
Pickles swallowed, then he stopped trembling, and brought his chin up slowly.  
The redhead looked like hammered shit, and there were dark circles under his worried eyes, but his pupils were normal.  Nathan blinked, and his hands slipped down to Pickles’s shoulders.  Pickles stared up at him, eyes wide.  
“You didn’t, did you,”  Nathan stated.  
“Noo…”  Pickles shook his head, jerkily.  
Without a word, Nathan gathered the exhausted musician into his arms, twisted sheets and all.  
“Naythen, I can’t move.  If I move, I’m gonna take somethin’-“  Pickles’s words tumbled out urgently against Nathan’s shoulder.  
“Let’s go for a drive,”  Nathan interrupted him,  “-we’ll deal with this - -this other shit in the morning.”

 

Pickles opened the white-painted door, and set a fresh square-sided blue bottle on the shelf in front of him.  
“Thirteen, fourteen…  I’m gonna run out a’room fer you little guys,”  Pickles told his collection, fondly.  …He stepped back, and shut the door.

 

“…H’llo?”  Nathan mumbled into the receiver.  
Pause.  
“Oh.  Fuck.  Hey, what’s up?”  Nathan cleared his throat, and sat up on one elbow.  
Pause.  
“HUH?  Oh! …uh… that’s really lame.”  
Pause.  
“Of course you can, you dick,” said Nathan.  
“…*…Euh…?”  Pickles mumbled, sleepily.  
Pause.  
“That?  That’s ah…”  Nathan shot a wild glance over his shoulder at Pickles, which Pickles was fortunately still too face-down to catch,  “-you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

 

“Listen, I need to-“  Nathan broke off, cleared his throat, and sighed, disgusted with himself.  
“…Wh’t?”  Pickles asked, through a mouthful of microwaved breakfast burrito.  
Nathan took another burrito out of the package, set it on a paper plate, and shut the microwave door.  He pressed ‘6:66’ on the keypad, and hit start.  
“LOOK, I’M SORRY, OKAY?”  Nathan blurted out.  
“Naythen, whet the _fuck_ , man?”  
“I have this friend-“  Nathan began, haltingly,  “-and he lives on a boat- -and he’s coming to- -with us for a while.  To stay.  Us.”  
“With -yew-, ya mean,”  Pickles corrected, taking another bite.  
“That’s- -that’s uh…”  Nathan trailed off into speechless silence.  
Pickles froze in mid-chew.  He stared back at Nathan, and swallowed hard.  
“Oh, _shite_ …  ah… are we t’gether?”  
“I- well, I thought- -but that was stupid-“  Nathan shook his head, and brought the side of his fist down on the kitchen counter with an unhealthy-sounding ‘crack!’.  “-Stupid, STUPID-“  
“Soo, d’you wanna be?”  Pickles interrupted,  “-t’gether, I mean?”  
Nathan stopped.  He turned around, and stared Pickles in the face, hard.  
Pickles gave him a lopsided smile of encouragement.  He had a flake of tortilla stuck to his teeth.  
“…ea,”  Nathan squeaked.  He frowned, then cleared his throat and tried again.  “-Yeah.  Yeah, I… do.”  
“-Okey,”  Pickles agreed, as soon as Nathan had finished speaking.  
There was a silence, and matched looks of surprise, doubt, and maniac glee.  
Nathan took a few ragged breaths and began laughing quietly, big hands gripping the edge of the cracked counter behind him.  
“-WHAT?”  Pickles demanded.  
“I- -I don’t know.  I just- -felt like laughing all of a sudden,”  Nathan managed.  
The microwave dinged.

 

“So, this friend a’yers-“  Pickles began.  
“He’s a shrimper.”  
“Whoa,”  Pickles’s red eyebrows shot up,  “-thet’s some talent,”    
“He catches shrimp,”  Nathan shrugged between bites,  “-on a boat.  -How hard can THAT be?”  
“Oh.  Well, thet’s cool too, I guess…”  said Pickles, scratching his head.  
Nathan looked puzzled for a moment, then pressed straight on.  
“Yeah.  Well anyway, this big storm fucked up the boat he works on, so he’s stuck on land for a while.  So that’s why he’s coming here.”  
“Yeah, I get it.  Thet’s cool.  Umm… where’s he gonna sleep?”  Pickles asked, tactfully.  
Nathan took another bite of his breakfast, and frowned.  
“That’sh a good question.”

 

Pickles selected an otter pop, and took it back to the table with him.  A pad of pale yellow note paper and several loose sheets were scattered across the tabletop, covered in Pickles’s childish, wandering handwriting.  Some lines were crossed out, others circled and moved elsewhere with arrows and exclamation points.  Pickles resumed writing by the pale gray light from the window, muttering under his breath and occasionally tapping out short rhythms on the tabletop with his fingertips.  
Finally Pickles grinned, and scribbled something else on the top-most page.  He shuffled all the loose sheets together into a pile and stood up.  Pickles rubbed his arms, glanced out the window at the whipping palm trees, and yawned.  
“Are you done?  Is it finished?”  Nathan asked, as Pickles crept back under the covers.  
“It’s gettin’ close, an’ DO NOT FUCK WITH IT, I _know_ you wanna peek…”  
“I can’t help it, babe…”  Nathan smiled.  
“So this is what, professional curiosity?”  
“I don’t -sing- my songs,”  Nathan reminded him, self-consciously.  
“HAH!  So you’ve written more’n one.  I -knoo- it,”  Pickles grinned, punching him in the shoulder.  
“Well… -it’s not the same thi- OH FUCK YOU’RE COLD-“  
“Sahrry.”  
“-C’mere.  …But like, I’ve never seen you WRITE a song before…”  Nathan continued, curling himself around Pickles.  
“You know Billy, Christmas doesn’t come if you don’t go d’sleep…”  Pickles warned him, innocently.  
“…Christmas has passed, but there’s always Valentine’s day,”  Nathan purred.  
“-Does this make seven, or eight?”  
“Since the storm, or just since the power went out?”  Nathan asked.  
“I am _nevah_ gonna get this damn song written…”  Pickles snickered.

 

Nathan woke to a beam of sunlight shining squarely in his face and sighed, throwing an arm across his eyes in defense.  
“Finahlly!  Shit, I thought you were gonna sleep straight through…  Oo, an’ your club called.  They’re not gonna be open tahnight, but they need some help cleaning up an’ unboardin’ the windows and shit,”  Pickles told him.  
“Uhmn,”  Nathan frowned, beneath his arm.  
“Riite.  -I’m gonna go take a shower.  Tha hot water’s back on.”  
“Don’t bother, we’re goin’ out,”  Nathan decided, sitting up and running his fingers back through his hair.  
“-Eh?”  Pickles blinked.  
“Get your helmet, and trust me.”

 

Pickles tightened his arms around Nathan’s waist as the motorcycle leaned into it’s next turn, blurred wheels throwing up a silver-gray bow wave of water onto the damp, sunny sidewalk.  
Somebody screeched, and high, angry swearing pursued them.  
Nathan arced the bike through two long, flat, puddles in the center of the street, sending up a faint spray in a delightful hiss of speed.  
“Dood-”  Pickles grinned, patting Nathan’s left elbow urgently,  “Dahg walker, ten o’clock!”

 

“This place is pretty fucked up,”  Pickles observed, poking a drift of broken glass and wet cardboard on the floor of the abandoned factory with the toe of one red cowboy boot.  
“Well, it was fucked up before,”  Nathan shrugged, hands in his pockets.  
He hadn’t wanted to leave the bike outside, but like HELL was he running it over anything in -here-.  
“I, ah- -I’m done with the song,”  said Pickles.  
“YOU ARE?”  said Nathan, forgetting all about the bike.  
“Yeah.  That’s why we’re here.  I wanna sing it for you, an’ the acoustics here kick ass.  …Or at least they did before all the glass got broke.”  
Nathan caught his breath, and put his hands on Pickles’s shoulders.  
“You’d do that- -you’d- -you’d let me hear the song first?”  
“Well yeeaah…  I mean- -well, you’ll see.  But there is kind of a catch: you’ve gotta sing ME somethin’ first.”    
“I DON’T SING!”  Nathan snapped, turning away.  
“So you keep sayin’, but dood, this thing is half full…”  Pickles took Nathan’s stitch-bound notebook out from under his shirt, and handed it to him.  
Nathan turned and stared, hands frozen at his sides.  
“Fer fuck’s sake, get a _grip_.  I didn’t OPEN it, I just noticed how much of it has wavy edges,”  Pickles sighed, pointing to the notebook’s top edge.  
Nathan let out a breath.  
“You took… …my song journal,”  he ground out.  
“I braght it for _you_.  If you don’t wanna use it that’s cool, an’ I won’t touch it again.  I jest… wanted ta hear you sing, thet’s all.”  
Nathan took the notebook without a word, and checked it over in the way a bear might inspect her recently-returned CUB.  
“Do not- -and I am serious, I cannot stress this enough, DO NOT touch this journal again.  Ever.”  
“Yeah, I get it…”  Pickles sighed.  
“Good, ‘cause I’d hate- -what the fuck were you thinking, Pickles?”  
“Nothin’, I just… I know you wish you _could_ sing, an’ …I was tryin’ ta help.”  
“So you swiped my song-writing journal.”  
“I didn’t even open the cover, Naythen,”  Pickles said quietly,  “-I swear.”   
“I know,”  Nathan nodded,  “-I believe you.”  
He put one hand on Pickles’s shoulder, and bent to press Pickles’s forehead with his own.  
“Why- -why do you want me to sing so much?”  
“’Cause it would sound fuckin’ _COOL_ , that’s why.”  
“…What if I sang you something I didn’t write?”  Nathan asked.  
“Well… tha’d be okey I guess.  I mean, it’s a start…”  Pickles shrugged.  
“Okay, I think I could do that, and I _really_ wanna hear your song.”  
“Okey, sounds good-“  Pickles began.  
“But you can’t laugh.  Seriously.  My singing’s like- -shouting things more than singing them.  I know it sucks, so just DON’T, all right?”  Nathan warned.  
“All rite, you got it dood.  I’ll just… try not to make any noise at all,”  Pickles agreed.  
“Yeah, that- -that’s good.  That works.  -Ahem.”  
“So what’re you gonna sing?”  Pickles asked, de-railing Nathan’s train of thought.  
Nathan knew a lot of lyrics.  Pages and _pages_ of heavy metal, thrash, classic rock, and damn near every song ‘Snakes and Barrels’ had ever released.  
NOTHING came to him.  
Nothing… except…  
“This one’s not going to make any sense.  It’s Norwegian.  Metal.  I mean, it’s in American NOW, but it _used_ to be in Norwegian and it doesn’t make any sense in American.  …Just so you KNOW that.”  
Pickles nodded, waiting.  
Nathan faced the empty building, took a deep breath, and began ‘Thunderhorse’.  
It WAS his song, but Pickles didn’t have to know that, and after the crushing agony of the first few ‘lines’, the works came easier, shaking the factory to it’s very foundations.  
One loose pane of glass actually fell.  
“Uhh…  Naythen…?”  Pickles interrupted, tugging at his wrist.  
A hot flush of anger burned across Nathan’s face, and he belted it, singing with the rage of true artistic betrayal.  
“NAYTHEN!!”  
“ _WHAT_?”  Nathan snarled, turning on him in a black fury.  
“The ROOF!  Fuckin’ RUN!”  Pickles screamed at him.  
“The ro-?”  Nathan glanced upwards,  “-OH, SHIT…!!!”  
As one, they turned and ran.  
Half a ton of rusted steel and glass roared down and splintered where they’d been standing a second before, bursting in a twisted, shattering explosion against the concrete floor.  There was a tortured screech of metal from somewhere overhead, and they were clear, and-  
Pickles stumbled on a patch of wet broken glass, and went down.  Nathan hauled him up by one arm, and they made it across the muddy parking lot just in time.  
The central beam of the roof snapped downwards with an unholy SPAAANG!, and the whole structure seemed to jump as if it’d been kicked, rattling and booming.  The far ends of the roof tilted, screeched, and collapsed, ripping down through the factory’ far ends like a giant can opener.  Heavy corrugated metal cracked, thundered, and rained down pale clouds of lead paint flakes into the bright noon sunshine.  Nathan and Pickles stood between two close-set buildings across the parking lot, staring back at the collapsing building open-mouthed.  
Or rather, Pickles was.  
Nathan stood with one hand still on Pickles’s arm, watching the devastation impassively.

 

Thunderhorse.  
Thunder.  
Clash.  
Thunderclap.  
Rattle, and _thump_ , and BOOM, and metal striking metal striking stone striking metal again, concrete rain scattering down, impacting faster then any Human being had ever struck _anything_.  
Pickles dropped to his knees, still listening.  Nathan glanced down quickly, saw that there was nothing really _wrong_ with him, and looked back up so as not to miss the finish.  
The factory died in choking rubble and rattling debris, steel plates and beams groaned anew under their disorderly load, and a few loose chunks of concrete rattled down a sheet of rusted metal roofing hollowly.  
And that was all.  
“Sweet freakin’ Jesus…”  Pickles gasped, eyes still glued to the hazy pile of rubble.  
“Are you all right?”  Nathan asked.  
Pickles dug an inhaler out his jeans pocket, and used it.  He took a few deeper breaths, then put it away, nodding.  
“Naythen- -that was it-  -That, THAT was the _sound_.  The one I’ve been looking for since…  It’s DRUMS, dood… it’s drums played like nobody’s ever played them before- -did- -did -did you HEAR that?!”  
“Yeah,”  Nathan nodded,  “I heard it.”  
“Waitminute, that was YOU!”  Pickles exclaimed, scrambling up from the ground and pointing at him suddenly.  
“-What?”  Nathan looked around.  
“You!  You knocked down a BUILDING, with- -with yer VOICE!”  
Nathan shrugged uncomfortably.  
“That was fuckin’ AWESOME,”  Pickles stepped closer, and looked up into Nathan’s eyes,  “-we need to have sex.  Right now.”  
“What, -here-?”  
“Thaet would work, yeah.”  
Nathan looked around, quickly.  One of the buildings they had taken shelter between had a door facing the alley, and he put a boot through it without checking to see if it was locked first.  The doorframe splintered at the level of the lock, and the door swung inwards.  Nathan looked back at Pickles, then walked quickly inside.  Pickles followed him, and shut the door with a faint crunch of broken wood.  
Inside there were deep shadows and deeper dust.  Pickles saw a large form moving in the darkness beside him, and grabbed it.  Nathan’s booted foot tangled with his, and they fell to the ground in a dusty cloud.  Pickles started coughing.  
“You’re uh- -you’re having trouble with this, aren’t you?”  said Nathan.  
“Fuck YOU.  I kin take it… an’ I’ve never been this _hard_ in my LIFE…”  Pickles whimpered.  
“You wanna do me?”  Nathan asked, and INSTANTLY regretted it.  
“Wow- are you su-“  Pickles broke off, smiling,  “…well no, actually that’s cool, but… wow.  It means a lot ta me that you said that, Nate.”  
“Let’s just- -not bring that up again,”  Nathan suggested, unbuckling his belt.

 

Hands.  
Lips.  
Tongue.  
Hot breaths against soft skin.  
Muscles trembling with a fine, high frequency.  
Hands in his hair, clutching and releasing, Pickles’s finely-tuned voice rising and falling to a low grind of swearing, rising in babbled nonsense and an increasingly pleading tone, hands gripping the back of his neck almost too hard, and finally locking around his shoulders like a lifeline.  Nathan growled low in the back of his throat, and reached up in the darkness for Pickles’s face to clamp a hand over his mouth as the scream began.

 

Streaked with gray dust and trailing finger-marks, Nathan leaned back against a stack of wooden boxes, and breathed.  Pickles sat across his lap bonelessly, one hand pressed to Nathan’s chest, head down on his collarbone.  
“Oh… my ghad…”  Pickles whispered.  
“-Mm,”  Nathan nodded, shakily.  
In the distance, a siren was coming nearer.  
“Can you move?”  Nathan asked.  
“Nope,”  Pickles answered, with absolute certainty.  Nevertheless, he leaned _just_ far enough to reach his clothes, and dug a pack of smokes out of one of the pockets.  He lit two, and the edge of his wild red hair glowed like a stove-burner in the dark.  Nathan took one and smoked it for a while, stroking his thumb across the space between Pickles’s shoulder blades.  
The fire truck was definitely getting closer.  
“…The hell with ‘em,”  Nathan sighed, smiling.


	6. Indian Head (and ½)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nathan finally gets to hear Pickles’s song.

—

“I’ve got a nickel in my pocket  
and some gum on my shoe  
the sidewalk’s baking   
and I don’t know what to do.  
Gotta flip that nickel  
gotta take it for a ride  
cause in that face of metal  
is a bastard in disguise-

one side is bullshit  
but the other side is true  
you gotta flip the nickel over   
and you show him what to do  
This might seem kinda crazy  
and it might sound kinda strange  
but stick a fork in it  
cause there’s nothing you can change  
Just a face from the past  
and a monster with a present  
gonna see your two and raise you five  
and push you to the limit  
so don’t you pay attention   
to the comics that you read  
They’re lacking grit they’re full of shit  
and common sense appease  
but sense it isn’t common  
and the camera’s lacking much  
crazy spinning on one edge  
and way too little touch  
Play the game and watch the bird  
and just say pretty please  
not that that’ll will help you  
when you’re down upon your knees  
So I think I’ll keep my secrets  
and I think I’ll spend my time  
playing with my nickel  
‘stead of wishing for a dime  
Making out on leather squeaks  
but he won’t let me fall  
canvas, oils or suntan inks  
or in a bathroom stall  
yeah they’re pounding on the ceiling  
and they’re banging on the walls  
but they’re laying down a beat  
for my monster’s nightly calls  
Now standing in the shower   
or just lying here in bed  
has got me back to thinking   
what I’d rather do instead.  
so when this night is over  
or the music gets too much  
or your brain is overloading   
with the chemicals and such  
take a walk to see a lady  
buy a drink and eat the ice  
count your change and change your rhythm  
piss away that ‘good advice’  
You can have your way with Tommy  
you can lay an honest man  
you can warm it up at valley forge  
or lick the pasta pan    
but don’t you look for me my dear  
cause I won’t be around  
you’ll never find a man who’s gone  
out looking for a sound  
I broke the glass I stayed the night  
I screamed to wake the dead  
But there’s one thing that I want right now  
and that’s my Indian Head.”  
-////-

Pickles set his pick down, and looked up.  
Nathan was sitting backwards on one of the kitchen chairs, arms folded.  He stared at Pickles, a deep flush coloring his cheeks, and an unreadable expression on his face.    
“So, wha’d you think?”  Pickles asked, trying to sound casual.  
“Uh…  I’m not sure I understood it, but I really, _really_ liked it,”  Nathan said, honestly.  
“…D’you wanna see my nickel?”  Pickles offered, arching an eyebrow.  
Nathan nodded.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, good, bad or indifferent, those lyrics were mine.


	7. Crash

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Murderface arrives, and Pickles takes up the drums.

—

Pickles yawned, and padded outside in just his jeans.  
The sun may have been up somewhere, but a high fog had yet to burn off over the city, and a feeling of rain lingered in the morning air, cool against his bare skin.  
Pickles lit a cigarette, and leaned his arms against the metal railing, inhaling deeply.  A door opened a few apartments down, and an old lady in a red, yellow and white flowered bathrobe shuffled out.  She held a healthy-looking plant by the plastic pot’s wire handle.  
“Hey, Mrs. Rockton,”  Pickles greeted her, raising his cigarette hand.  
Mrs. Rockton turned her intelligent eyes on him out of a face like weathered mahogany.  She hung the houseplant from the railing in front of her apartment, looked over at Pickles sidelong, then shuffled back inside her apartment, shaking her head.

  
Pickles grinned, and hung his head for a few moments after her door closed, letting the red thatch of his hair shut out the rest of the world.  A car honked distantly on the street below.  
Pickles took a deep breath and stood up straight.  He set the cigarette between his lips, and stretched against the railing like a cat, groaning softly.  
When the cigarette was gone, Pickles headed back inside.

 

“Knock, knock,”  Pickles said, through the open door.  
“PICKLES!  HEY, COME IN!  MURDERFACE GOT HERE TODAY!”  Nathan began, excitedly.  
“Yeah, I kin see that-“  …A thick forest of green beer bottles  had grown up on the kitchen table between them, and a scruffy, mulleted man in faded black shorts and a ‘Top Gun’ t-shirt was gaping at him in wide-eyed wonder…  “-s’up?”  Pickles waved.  
William Murderface sat as if carved in stone.  
Pickles snapped his fingers in Will’s face a few times, then shrugged.  
“-Eh.  It’ll wear off.”

 

“Shunny an’ Rico are NAT GAY!”  Murderface protested, through a mouthful of extra-buttery popcorn.  
“Dood.  They _are_ ,”  Pickles giggled, passing the joint to Nathan.  
“NO, they’re NAT!  Thay’re COPSH…”  Murderface protested, waving a hand at the TV in frustration.  
Nathan sprawled between them on the new/secondhand couch, and the wide spread of his muscular arms nearly covered the back.  He could feel the warmth of the smoky room against his face, and the slight squeak and dip of the couch cushions on his left as Murderface shifted his weight in the grip of a losing argument.  
Nathan could feel Pickles’s drawn-up knee resting against his, and see the bright, blurry glow of the television set past the fringe of Pickles’s teased red hair.  
Nathan smoked, eyes closed, then passed the joint to Murderface without looking.  Murderface took it from him, blunt fingers greasy from the popcorn.  
Pickles’s knee shifted against Nathan’s as the redhead leaned forward to point out something on the screen.  Nathan smiled in the dark, but didn’t open his eyes.

 

Pickles approached the gleaming beast in the corner of the room, and tapped one of the cymbals with his fingernail.  It rang cleanly.  Something about the sound seemed to suggest steel instead of the brass it appeared to be.  
“Yeah, this is good.  -This is the same kit you use fer gigs, rite?”  
Marcus nodded, hands in the pockets of his cords.  
Pickles walked around to the back of the drum kit, adjusted the smooth-worn leather stool down a little, and chose two sticks from the wide-mouthed earthenware jar on the floor behind him.

“Letsh go out an’ get trashed.”  
“Did that last night.  Besides, I uh- -I gotta work,”  Nathan admitted.  
“Sho?  You work at a CLUB, dipshtick,”  Murderface pointed out.  
“Yeah, but…  I’m _working_ , okay?”  Nathan reminded him.  
“Then jusht this once, I’ll let you drive my truck,”  Murderface offered.   
Nathan accepted Murderface’s ‘L.A. Gear’ keychain by the dried alligator foot, and stuck them in his pocket.  
“If I have to throw you out later, don’t be a dick, all right?  Just uh- -go sleep in the truck.”  
“Yesh, _dad_ …”

 

Nathan woke up with Pickles’s head pillowed on the inside of his elbow, and a limp, lightly freckled arm trailing across his chest.  
Nathan leaned his head forwards stealthily, and took a deep breath in Pickles’s hair.  
When he drew back, Nathan felt the head on his arm stir.  
“Hey,”  Pickles whispered, smiling.  
“Morning, babe,”  Nathan whispered back.  
“Mmm… I didn’ hear you come in.”  
“You must’ve been really passed out then,”  said Nathan, shooting a glance over at the snoring hump on the couch.  
“Drumming is naht like playin’ guitar.  It’s more like… -have you ever done Jazzercise?”    
“-What?”  
“Neveh mind.  Think of doin’ warm-up drills fer six hours straight.”  
“Whoa.  No wonder you’re wiped.”  Nathan ran a hand down over Pickles’s shoulder, massaging thoughtfully.  
“Yeah, that- -that hurts, actually.”  
The gripping changed to a stroking motion.  
“You could get really cut doing that,”  Nathan noted,  “-drumming, I mean.”  
“…You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”  Pickles smirked.  
“Yes.  Yes I would.”    
A strip of Nathan’s dark hair had fallen in front of his face, and it suited him.  
Breakfast, Pickles decided, could wait.

 

“What ISH this shit?”  Murderface demanded, jamming his thumb on the ‘stop’ button.  
“That,”  Pickles said, moving the tape player out of Murderface’s reach, “-is tha Edinburgh military tattoo.”  
“Sho they’re like, supposhed to make people run away from them with that?”  
“Fer fuck’s sake, they’re a BAND, okey?  Like a marching band, only Scottish.  That wailing catshit is bagpipes.”  -Pickles stabbed the ‘play’ button.  
Murderface frowned, and crossed his arms.  
Pickles listened, sometimes counting on his fingers, and scribbled increasingly complex notes on a pad of yellow notepaper.  
“Their drumlinesh nat bad,”  decided Murderface, listening in spite of himself.  
Pickles’s pen paused.  He put it down, and stopped the tape.  
“A’rite.  Whadda you play?”

 

“Neyth’nnn…”  Pickles whimpered, through clenched teeth.  
“SHH,”  Nathan kissed him hard, and dipped his hand back down.  
“MMMmmmMMMMNNNN-!!!”  
Nathan stopped what he was doing and broke the kiss, panting softly.  He squeezed his eyes shut.  
“You can’t -not make noise -can you,”  Nathan whispered.  
“…Sahrry,”  Pickles whispered back, shrugging unhappily.  
Nathan thought for a moment.  He could barely focus, but he was MOTIVATED.  
“Let’s do some laundry.”  
“ _WHAT_?”  Pickles hissed, dangerously.  
“You.  Me.  Laundry room.”  
“Oo… heh.  -Okey.”  
They went.  
The laundry room was deserted.  Aside from Las Vegas, Nathan doubted laundry rooms GOT crowded at three in the morning.  He locked the door, and considered his options.  
Pickles jumped him.  
“GHAD I hate holdin’ back…”  Pickles growled, against Nathan’s ear.  
“Oh man-”  (kiss)  “-me too-“ (kissss)  “-I _love_ it when you scream…”  
“Gat any quarters?”  Pickles asked.  
Nathan paused for a moment.  He still had his work clothes on, which meant a black t-shirt and jeans, and his wallet was still in the back right pocket.  And his change from the-  
“Uh, yeah.  I think so.”  
Pickles grinned, and nodded towards the dryers.  
“NOT a washing machine?”  
“Dryers feel more like caers.”  
“…You like being fucked across cars?”  
“Remember that part in my song about the Alfa-Romero…?”  Pickles began.  
Nathan shoved Pickles against the wall suddenly, kissing him, kneading him with his hands, pressing hard, gripping Pickles’s ass through the sheer blue swim trunks he’d thrown on to go downstairs…  
Nathan got a hold of himself, and they broke apart, panting.  Nathan turned with an effort, and fished a few quarters out of his pocket, wincing at the tight fit of his jeans.  
“When I turn around you better be naked,”  he stated, feeding the quarters into the nearest dryer.  
Pickles was.    
He dropped the trunks on top of a washer, and walked forward purposefully.  
Nathan caught his breath and stared.  
It was like having a hallucination.  Naked rock god in a laundry room…  
The fluorescent lights were unforgiving.  Wild hair that was rougher than it looked.  Hungry eyes flashing under perfect arches of red.  Compact, well-proportioned body that looked younger than his own, but wasn’t.  Slim, smooth chest leading down to a flat stomach with just a shade of definition, and harder lines along the joints of his hips, there was some kind of nerve there-  
A red arrow in between, no more or less scratchy than the beard on Pickles’s face… and bobbing stiffly with each quick step-  
Pickles looked up at Nathan in annoyance.  
“Strip,”  he ordered,  “-NOW.”  
Nathan picked Pickles up by his hips, spun, and sat him on the dryer abruptly.  
“I didn’t bring anything,”  Nathan blurted out.  
“Do I LOOK like I CAERE?”  Pickles said, in something dangerously close to a whine.  
“You’re going first,”  Nathan told him, and bent to his task.

 

Pickles’s hands found Nathan’s hair and lost themselves in it, gripping and _making_ himself let go, carding through it like a curtain of fine steel jewelers’ chain.  It was so fucking _smooth_ …  Pickles bit his bottom lip, tipping his head back slowly, eyes shut.  
Nathan ate him alive.  
Demand.  Consumption.  The act of being taken.   
It was aggressive, and gentle, controlled and unstoppable.  
Hungry.  Ohmighad, is he actually gonna bite-  -no.  Pickles opened his eyes, and forced himself to look down immediately.  
Nathan.    
Just Nathan, dark hair swinging slightly as he sucked.  One large hand gripped Pickles’s hip hard, but the thumb of the other was stroking softly across the crease of his hip.  
The whole sight DID something, and Pickles crashed, and he burned…  
And Nathan caught him.

 

“Welcome back,”  Nathan purred, in his ear.  
“WHAT-?  Was I ASLEEP-?”   
“No, but I’ve never seen you pass out from a blowjob before,”  said Nathan, looking pleased.  
“ _That’s_ why I feel so good…”  Pickles sighed, relaxing,  “…But we’re nat done here, are we?”  
“No.  Are you up to it?”  Nathan asked.  
“Yeah…”  Pickles nodded after a moment,  “-go slow.”  
Nathan smiled, and dropped a kiss on his shoulder.  
“Hands on the hood.”  
Pickles blinked.  
Nathan’s hand closed around his wrist and tugged in a ‘get up’ gesture.  
“Okey, I don’t want any trouble,”  Pickles said shakily, sliding off the dryer with a squeak and turning around.  …He had to put has hands on -something- or he was gonna fall -down-…  
“What makes you think I’m a cop?”  Nathan asked, pressing a hand to the center of Pickles’s chest.  
“I thaught, um,”  Pickles broke off, as Nathan’s fingers found his left nipple.  
“You were saying?”  
“UmmMMM…”  
Nathan’s other hand slipped between his legs, delivering a shock of something wet and cool.  Pickles pressed forwards against the dryer, chilled fingers and warm, rattling metal warring in his mind.  Nathan reached in, and Pickles jerked, catching his breath and opening his eyes wide.  
“Shh,”  Nathan ordered.  
A tremor ran across Pickles’s shoulders.   He shut his eyes again, and a small frown of concentration settled between his eyebrows as Nathan’s hands brought him back to life, piece by piece.

 

The door opened.  
“-Put it through a wall,”  Pickles was giggling, quietly.  
“Watch your hea-“  
Thump.  
More soft snickering.  
“C’mon, seriously, we’re gonna wake him up,”  Nathan whispered.  
“And what are we _doing_?”  Pickles murmured, archly.  
“We’re standing in an open door,”  said Nathan.  
“Annnd?”  
Sudden silence.  A faint rustle of nylon.  Soft wet noise.  
A soft pop, and out-of-synch breathing.  
Silence.  Breathing.  
Rustle.  
A moth flew in the open doorway past Pickles’s shoulder as they kissed, and landed on the wall above the couch.  
Murderface glared at it, then closed his eyes and concentrated on remaining invisible.


	8. Batter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Murderface meets the neighbors, and Pickles gets I.D.’d.

—

  
The phone rang.  
Nathan knocked it off the nightstand, and had to fish for it on the carpet.  
“-Th’ fuckizz this?”  he growled, finally.  
“Sahrry, wrong number,”  …the caller hung up.  
“Motherfucker…” Nathan muttered, replacing the receiver.  
He glanced back to see if Pickles had woken up, but the musician’s shoulder still rose and fell slowly.  The perpetual crease between Nathan’s eyebrows eased a little.  He lay back down, and went to sleep.

‘Monster in my chest  
Rises again  
Crushing, twisting, choking me  
Crushing, twisting, breaking free  
Heat, can’t breathe, going DOWN  
Seen, the last-‘  
“Dood, where’d you put tha chili?”  Pickles asked, from behind the refrigerator door.  
“Bottom shelf, in the back,”  Nathan replied, without looking up.  
“Theresh chili?”  Murderface asked from the couch, brightening.  
“Oh _fuck_ ,”  Nathan said, quietly.

 

Glistening with sweat in the stuffy air of Marcus’s well-lit basement, Pickles felt himself hit the ZONE, and kept playing.  Strike, and pause, rat-tat-tat-tat- tat-tat-tat- tat-tat-tat-TOOMB-BOOM.  Shake down, and ghost up.  Rattle, and roll, and roar.  And keep the beat, always keep- DAMN, thought too hard- -okay, got it- keep- like a heartbeat- and- -twothreefourfivesixseveneightnineteneleventwelvebreakthirteenfourteenfifteen,onetwothreefourfi-  
Pickles’s own heartbeat thundered in his ears, more a thing felt than heard over the noise of his playing.  His arms felt loose, weak, but the looser he held the sticks the faster the beats were coming…  
Pickles finished in a rough wall of sound, and let his arms drop to his sides, panting.  
He shut his eyes, and felt the sweat on the end of his nose slide down into his mustache.  
Pickles left his sticks on the seat of the stool, and went upstairs.    
Marcus was at the bar that divided the kitchen from the living room, flipping through a vehicle classifieds rag.  He circled something in pencil, and looked up smiling.  One of the young man’s dark dreds had escaped from it’s white scrunchie, and hung down just in front of his thin-rimmed glasses.  
“Fuuuck, man.  You ever gonna give me my drums back?”  
Pickles grinned, filled a pint glass from the drying rack at the kitchen faucet, and drank most of it in one long pull.  
“THAT,”  he declared, “-was GREAT.”  
“Ahh, you’ll get it…”  Marcus teased.  
“NO, ya douchebag, I meant how it -felt-…”  Pickles finished his glass, and re-filled it from a plastic pitcher of green stuff in the fridge,  “-I just- -I dunno- fuck, YOO know what I’m sayin’ here…”  
“Yeah,”  Marcus nodded,  “-lissen, you think you can keep your hands off my girlfriend fo the next two days?”  
“Why?”  
“I gotta gig Friday, man.  Gotta practice.”  
“Yeah, all right,”  Pickles said, sounding more reluctant than he’d meant to.  
“You need ta get your own set, Pickles,”  Marcus told him, frankly.  
“I like yers.”  
“Do it.  You’ll thank me.”  
“My neihbours won’t,”  Pickles noted, smiling lopsidedly.  
“You’re fuckin’ PICKLES man, what kin they do?”  Marcus asked, incredulous.  
Pickles sighed.  
“…I’m naht ready, a’right?”  
“Whatever, dude,”  Marcus said, raising his hands in a hopeless gesture,  “-but remember, I got her until Friday.”  
Pickles nodded, and took another swallow.

 

“GO LONG!!!”  Nathan yelled.  
“I got it!”  Daniel called, stroking quickly for the far end of the pool.  Carmen headed him off, and they went down in a boil of grappling and bubbles.  
“BRENT!”  Nathan bellowed, and flung a thick-soled blue flip-flop out into mid-water just before Pickles tackled him.  But now Nathan no longer had the ball…  
In the sparkling water just above Nathan’s momentarily lowered shoulder, Pickles let go and twisted, shoving away hard with both hands.  Nathan’s right arm lashed the bubbles, and missed.  
On the surface, Brent got tackled at the four-foot-deep marker by his cousin Jimmy, and Murderface blew the whistle decisively from above.

 

”Hello, ladiesh…”  
The blonde ignored Murderface in favor of her paperback, and the brunette gave him an incredulous look over her thick-framed yellow sunglasses.  
“The namesh Will.  Will Murderfache… I’m the captain of the ‘Pelican King’.  …Jusht ah, thoughtsh you should know.”  
The brunette pushed her sunglasses up the bridge of her nose with one finger, and wished for a book.  
“Hey, whatsh that you’re reading…?”  Murderface began.

 

Pickles leaned back against Nathan’s chest in the shallows contentedly, and Nathan slid an arm around his waist.  
Murderface snorted, and reached up out of the pool for his half-finished beer.  
“Awright, letsh have it…”  
“What?”  Nathan blinked.  
“How the HELL did _your_ dumb ash end up fuckin’ PICKLESH?”  
“Dood, I’m right here,”  Pickles pointed out.  
“Awright, when didsh YOU take leave a’yer shenshes?”  Murderface asked Pickles, in the same tone.  
Nathan and Pickles looked at each other.  
“Just uh, lucky I guess,”  Nathan shrugged.  
“I’m gonna be fuckin’ shick.  -Picklesh?”  Murderface appealed.  
“He let me steal ‘is tartar sauce.”  
Silence.  
“…You got any shishters?”  Murderface asked.  
“No, but I gat a brother you can have…”

 

“Let’s see some I.D.”  
The kid handed it over.  ‘Florida Driver’s License.  Travis F. Conway, 422 Pembrooke Ln, Tallahassee, FL.  DOB: 05-26-1965’.  
“Okay.  Okay, go,”  Nathan instructed, with a jerk of his head.  
The kid went.  
“Let’s see some I.-D?”  
The kid held it out to him.    
The club’s blue and white neon sign gleamed off the low-brimmed leather military cap that covered his short red hair, and caught on the steel snaps of his black biker jacket.  Beneath that, he was wearing a black open-mesh tank top, black jeans so ripped they looked fragile, a leather belt with a big silver buckle, and black motorcycle boots.    
Nathan swallowed hard, and reached out blindly for the I.D.  
Pickles caught his hand smoothly, and gave it to him.    
‘California I.D. Card.  Pickles Doodily Doo Ding-dong Doodily Doodily Doo, 6 Palmetto Ave, Los Angeles CA.  DOB: April 2, 196-‘  
Nathan looked up sharply.  
“What- -what kind of a name is that?”  
“It’s legal, man.  I had it changed,”  Pickles told him, casually.  
“You expect me to believe your last name is Doodily Doo Ding-d-“  
“Whadda you care if my name is Mickey Mouse?  I’m old enough, ain’t I?”  
Nathan glared down at him, nonplussed.  
“Besides, dood…”  Pickles smiled wickedly and stretched closer to whisper in Nathan’s ear,  “I’ve gat drugs in places you wouldn’t believe…”  
Nathan inhaled sharply.  
“Naythen, fuckin’ check me fer drugs already,”  Pickles hissed, under his breath.  
“…Bouncers don’t- -we don’t do that,”  Nathan admitted, uncomfortably.  
“Well by christ you better start, because am NAT leavin’ this club until you’ve seen the color of MY-“  
Nathan coughed suddenly, and turned to the other bouncer, who was by now staring at them pointedly.  
“Jamal, I’ve got a, ahem, situation here.”  
“What kind of a situation?”  
Nathan leaned in professionally and rumbled,  
“Nooner.  Play along if you value your life.”  
Jamal’s face went perfectly blank, and he nodded slowly.  
“-Drugs?  Into MY club?  C’mere, you…”  Nathan fisted a hand in the back of Pickles’s jacket collar and twisted, basically turning the whole beautiful coat into a handle.  
“Hey, git off me, man!  Motherfucker, can’t you take a joke?  I don’t GAT any-“  
“MOVE it, punk!”  Nathan propelled his charge before him towards the doorway.  
“Screw YOU, my dad’s a lawyer-!“  Pickles snarled, over his shoulder.

 

Pickles sauntered out of the club looking dreamy and slightly unsteady in his boots.  He stood with his back arrogantly to the door, and lit a cigarette with relish.    
The corner of Jamal’s mouth began to twitch.    
Pickles reached up and tucked a loose strip of long red hair back under his leather cap. Then he stepped up to the curb, put two fingers to his mouth, and blew an authoritative whistle.  
“Yo!  TAXI!”  
Pickles had one within five seconds.  He climbed in, and the taxi drove off.  
Nathan came out a minute later while Jamal was busy checking a group of late arrivals’ I.D.’s.  The partiers pressed on into the club, and Jamal glanced over at Nathan.  
“Any drugs?”  he asked, eyebrow raised.  
“No, I- -I don’t think so,”  Nathan said, eyes still slightly unfocused.  
Jamal grinned, and high-fived him.

 

Pickles stumbled backwards from the bathroom door, a stricken expression on his suddenly waxy face.  He made it to the kitchen sink, and threw up.  A lot.  
“Oh, C’MON…”  Murderface protested angrily from the couch,  “-thatsh what itsh FOR!”  
“Naht… right….”  Pickles whimpered, head still buried in the sink.    
Nathan walked in with a bucket of ice from the machine downstairs.  
“…What the FUCK-?  Babe, are you okay?”  He set the ice on the cracked kitchen counter, and checked on Pickles.  
“HE’SH BEING DRAMATIC!”  Murderface yelled, from the other side of the room.  
Pickles shook his head emphatically without looking up, and ran some water in the sink.   
“Okay, what happened?”  
Pickles pointed behind him at the bathroom door meaningfully.  
Nathan looked at Murderface.  
“Wha- -oh you haf gat to be KIDDIN’ me…”  Murderface snarled,  “-I ushed yer fuckin’ _bathroom_ , Nathan.  Clean up the princhesh, an get a GRIP!”  
Nathan squared his shoulders, crossed the room, and opened the bathroom door.  
“DEAR GOD IT’S LIKE SNORTING TABASCO SAUCE IN HERE!”  Nathan gagged, yanking the door closed again in self-defense.  
“…Maybe I should jusht go,”  Murderface said, dejectedly.  
“NO,”  Nathan cut him off,  “-first we’re gonna do tequila shots to get that god awful smell out of my mouth, and then we’re gonna make a sign for the door.”    
Nathan took down three shotglasses, and poured.  
Pickles finished rinsing out his mouth, turned off the tap, and accepted one of the shots.  
Murderface stood with one shoulder to them, feet planted apart and arms folded sullenly over his ‘Big Johnson’s Plumbing’ t-shirt.  
Nathan waited.  
Pickles slammed his shot back abruptly and took a few deep breaths, the color returning visibly to his face.  Nathan refilled his glass without comment.  
Finally, Murderface picked up the third shot glass, and they all drank.

 

The phone rang.    
Pickles ignored it, drifting between wakefulness and sleep.    
It stopped after three rings, remained silent for about five seconds, then started ringing again.  
Pickles’s eyes snapped open.  He lunged across Nathan’s empty spot on the bed, and grabbed the receiver.  
“Yeah, _what_?”  he answered, testily.  
Pause.  
“-No.  No, dood, we’ve been OVER this-“  
Pause.  
“Yeah, but yer NOT, okey?”  
Pause.  
“NO!  I doo, but-“  
Pause.  
“…I can’t do thet, Seth.”  
Pause.  
“NO.  No, no, no, no, an’ NO, awright?  That’s naht my scene anymore.”  
Momentary pause.  
“Yeah I know, I-”  
Pause.  
“Look, thet’s your decision, but-“  
Pause.  
“No, fuck _you_ , man!”  
Pause.  
“Well… that I do,”  Pickles sighed.  
Pause.  
“No, DON’T cut me in ya douchebag, I don’t want ANY part a’this.”  
Pause.  
“Only because-“  
Pause.  
“Just go _away_ , allrite?  …Don’t call me anymore.”  
Pause.  
“That’s naht fair.  G’night, Seth.”    
Pickles hung up abruptly, and lay staring at the red numbers of the digital clock in the dark.  After a while he got up, pulled a bottle out of the fridge, and screwed off the threaded metal cap.

Across the room on the couch, Murderface listened to the clink of glass and frowned, wondering.


	9. Balls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Murderface defends Nathan’s honor, and pushes Pickles just a little too far…

—

“Oh yea,”  Pickles nodded at the music video playing on TV,  “-he’s a TOTAL douchebaeg.  I came backstage one time and he’s like, tryin’ ta mouth-rape this lady from the caterin’ staff.”    
Pickles fished a slice of pear out of the open can in his hand with his fingers, and ate it.  
“That’sh one way of callingsh for takeout,”  Murderface smirked,  “-sho what did you do?”  
“Pointed an’ laughed.  There’s these little- -whaddya call ‘em, the camp-stovey things thet bums drink an’ that give yoo a real bad hangover?”  Pickles asked, licking the pear syrup off of his fingers absently.  
“Shterno cans?”  Murderface supplied, glancing back at the TV.  
“Yea, those.  Anyway, the cooks carry lighters for those, so she pretended like she was goin’ down on him, an’ then she lit the back of his shirt on fire.  It was funny as hell.  …An’ thet was a polyester shirt, too…”

“What about the guy behindsh him in the white pantsh?”  Murderface pointed.  
Oh, Ricky.  He, uh…  he’s pretty boring, actually.”  
“PAH!  -Lame,”  Murderface snorted.  
The song ended, and MTV went to commercials.  
Pickles ate another slice of pear, and sucked the syrup off his fingers.  
“WOULDSH YOU SHOTP DOING THAT!?”  Murderface exploded.  
“-Whet?  What’m I doin’?”  
“Shucking your goddamn fingersh!  You’re jusht going to get ‘em shticky again in five fuckin’ sheconds!  LEAVE ‘EM FUCKING SHTICKY!”  
“Okey, I am NAT comfortable with this convasation…”  Pickles began, then paused.  “-Waitaminnit, are you just tryin’ to get me to share?”  
“GIMMIE THE FUCKING PEARSH!”  Murderface demanded, an edge of exasperation in his voice  
“Fine, fine, whatevah…”  Pickles stole one more slice, and passed Murderface the mostly-empty can, still chewing.  
Murderface scowled at him and took a drink of the syrup, slurping a pear slice down like a noodle, and making a noise like the loogie from hell.

 

“-Six months ago today, when the music world was rocked by the news that mega band Snakes and Barrels had broken up.  There’s been no word yet on whether or not the band plans to reunite, but Chad King of Griffin Records had this to say…”  
Pickles stared at the screen, his pears forgotten.    
“-They’re an amazing band, but they’ve got their problems just like anyone else.  We can all hope, but what happens now is really up to Snakes and Barrels.”  
“Any updates on bassist Antonio Thuderbottom’s solo project, ‘Snakes Basket’?”  a field reporter asked.  
“We don’t have a set timeframe for that yet, but he’s working on it,”  the record exec said.  
“TONY’S DOING A SOLO?!”  Pickles exclaimed.  “How the FUCK-?”  
“And what about the rest of the band?”  the reporter asked,  “-No one’s seen Sammy or Bullets since Bullets’s arrest for possession back in December, and Pickles-”  
“Dood, I gotta call ‘im,”  Pickles jumped up from the couch, and started bouncing up and down on his toes  “-this is gonna be great, I kin-“    
Murderface glared death.  Pickles stopped bouncing.  
“…Whet?  You’re lookin’ at me funny…”  
Murderface lunged to his feet and punched him in one quick motion.  
The blow took Pickles completely by surprise, and he fell.  He scrambled up gamely however, fists raised and green eyes flashing.  
“WHAT THA -FUCK-, YOU DOG-BREATH DOUCHEBAEG?!”  
“You jusht couldn’t WAIT, could you?  The MINNIT you get shome lame excuse ta shlither back to your old band-“  
“WHAT?!  You thought I was jest gonna ditch-!“  Pickles’s eyes narrowed, and the edge of a dangerous grin touched his lips,  “-oh, it is ON, motherfucker…”  
Pickles waded in swinging.    
Murderface fell back against the couch, a sticky stripe of pear syrup splashing down the front of his t-shirt.  He managed to grab Pickles’s wrists, but when he tried to get the smaller man in a head-lock, Pickles bit Murderface’s meaty forearm like an alley cat.  
Roaring in pain, Murderface shoved him away one-handed, but couldn’t disentangle himself.  Pickles punched him once in the face, and then went to work on his ribs, short, hard jabs that felt like being stabbed with a policeman’s baton.  Murderface kneed him, missed, and connected with Pickles’s hip.  Pickles swore and stumbled, his balance broken.  Murderface punched him in the solar plexus quickly, and dropped him with a head-butt.  
Pickles sank to the carpet, holding his head and groaning.  
Murderface clamped a hand over the bleeding bite on his right forearm, cussing under his breath.  
On TV, the Snakes and Barrels video, ‘You Wish’ was playing.

 

“This is gonna hurt like fuck,”  Pickles warned,  “-jus’ so you knoo…”  
“Do it,”  Murderface ordered, setting his jaw resolutely.  
Pickles poured clear liquor over the ring of tooth marks on Murderface’s arm.  
Murderface bellowed like a freshly-castrated calf, and tore his arm out of Pickles’s grasp.

 

”-I’ve got big balls-!“    
”-I’ve got big ballsh-!“    
“An’ they’re such big balls-!“  
“And they’re shuch big ballsh-!“  
“Dirty big balls-!“  
“Dirty big ballsh-!“  
Nathan could hear both drunken voices, and the gravelly thunder of Murderface’s bass shaking the door as he put his hand to the doorknob.  
“-An’ he’s got big balls-!“  
“-And he’s got big ballsh-!“  
“An’ she’s got big balls-!“  
“And she’sh got big ballsh-!“  
“But WE’VE GOT THE BIGGEST BALLS OF THEM ALL!!!”  
“But WE’VE GOT THE BIGGESHT BALLSH OF THEM ALL!!!!”  
Nathan grinned, and pushed the door open.

 

“Oh my gaaahd… whadid I do last night…?”  Pickles moaned, peeling his cheek off the kitchen linoleum with a slightly sticky sound.  His head was pounding, though whether from the fight yesterday or from his current hangover, Pickles wasn’t sure.  He made it up to his hands and knees, and crawled over to one of the kitchen cabinets.  Pickles turned slowly to sit with his back against the dark-stained wood, and cradled his head in his hands.  
After about half an hour, he tried moving again.  Pickles knew what he -wanted-, but he was drinking his breakfast without the codeine chaser these days…  
-Fuck.  Fuckity-fuck, fuck, FUCK.  
Pickles found an empty cup on the floor, made his way to the fridge, and sat in the cool draft of the open door for a while.  He got out the Worcestershire sauce, eggs, vodka, and Tabasco sauce, and set them out on the floor in front of him.  Pickles considered going for the salt and pepper, but those were all the way up on the counter…  
Pickles mixed himself a prairie oyster with what he had, took a deep breath, and slammed it.  He counted to five in his head, then breathed.  Feeling slightly better, Pickles mixed another one and got up to look for Nathan.  
Nathan was passed out on his side just in front of the couch- -Pickles had a vague recollection of hearing a falling-tree sound at some point- -and Murderface was asleep with his nose buried dangerously deep in the couch cushions, and one arm trailing off the side of the couch.  
Murderface’s unconscious fingers were fisted loosely in the bottom edge of Nathan’s dark hair.  
Pickles contemplated them for a while, swirling the drink in his hand without breaking the yolk.  Then got his nickel out of the open guitar case in the corner, and held it up between finger and thumb.  Pickles smiled at the Indian on the back, and turned the coin over.  The front side showed a great, shaggy bull buffalo, with the words ,‘United States of America’ arcing over him like a yoke from the back of his huge wooly head to his narrow hindquarters.  
Pickles looked from the back of Murderface’s shaggy mullet to the bull, and back again.    
Then he smiled.  
“-Buffalo Bill.  …Heh.”   
Pickles flipped the nickel in the air, caught it awkwardly, and slipped it into the pocket of his dark blue sweatpants, still smiling.  
He tossed off the second Prairie oyster, and headed outside for a cigarette.

 

“Hi Chad, kin I talk to Cynthia?’  said Pickles.  
Pause.  
“Cyn, hey lady, how’s it goin’?”  
Pause.  
“I’m good.”  
Pause.  
“…I’m, eh, on vacation.  Heh.”  
Pause.  
“I don’t know.  Really.  How’s things with you?”  
Pause.  
“Thet’s good… hey lissen, is Tony really workin’ on something?”  
Pause.  
“…Yeeah, that’s what I thought.”  Pickles sighed.  
Pause.  
“Yeah, I haeve actually.  Just the one, though.  I was thinkin’ of-”  
Pause.  
“Fuck, right NOW?”  
Pause.  
“No.  No, I wasn’t.  Since we’re all broken up an’ shit, I figured I’d take the time ta do it right, yanno, the way _I_ want to.”  
Pause.  
“Look, I don’t need thet, okey?  I just wanna getitt right… since we’re on tha subject though, you wanna send me my mail?  I got a P.O. box…”  
Pause.  
“-No Cyn, I’ve got a place to stay.  -It’s sweet of ya to ask, though.”  
Pause.  
“THET is none of your business,”  Pickles laughed.

 

Nathan stopped his bike in front of a long, low house on the outskirts of the city, and kicked down the stand.  There was something vaguely familiar about it, a post-war 1950’s feel only half buried under the riotous tropical landscaping.  Nathan walked up to the white-painted door, and knocked.  
A young man with dark dreds and an intelligent face answered.   
“Yo Pickles, your ride is here!”  He called over his shoulder.  
Pickles was in Nathan’s arms three breaths later, warm, sweaty, and exhausted.  
“Hey.  You ready to go?”  Nathan asked.  
“Oh wait, lemmie go get my sticks-”  Pickles disappeared back into the house.  
“Nice bike,”  Marcus said, indicating the big black motorcycle in his driveway.  
“Yeah, that’s the Murdercycle.  Got it at a police auction.”  
“What’s with the name?”  
“The last guy to ride it got uh, beheaded,”  Nathan explained, modestly.

 

Wind.  
Pickles could feel tugging in his hair, and fluttering the back of his black cutoff t-shirt.  
Warmth.  
The seat of the bike roaring beneath him, the sun on his arms wherever the wind wasn’t, the still envelope caught between him and Nathan.  
Speed.  
Flickering yellow lines, smooth blurred pavement, the hole in air that just barely rocked the bike each time Nathan passed another vehicle.  Palm trees…  
Power.  
The feeling of leaning with the curves, and not falling down.  The way anything was a lane.  The gravity of Nathan’s solid chest under his hands, lower ribs just discernible under the shifting layers of muscle as he breathed.  
Pickles shut his eyes and listened, black hair swirling across his face.

 

Pickles noticed a bowl of bananas on the kitchen counter, half-peeled one, and took it back to the table with him.    
Murderface noticed the bowl of bananas, smiled, and slipped one into the capacious right pocket of his shorts for later.  Pickles saw him do this, raised an eyebrow, then went back to the song he was writing.  
Nathan came in, took a beer out of the fridge, and grabbed a banana as an afterthought.  He peeled it almost all the way down, ate the thing in two quick bites, and tossed the peel into the trash.  Then Nathan walked out of the kitchen, beer in hand.  
“Dood… d’you think he can do that in _one_?”  Pickles wondered, aloud.  
“Fuck if _I_ know…”  Murderface said, crossing his arms defensively.  
“I betcha he can,”  Pickles grinned.  
“Thatsh not posshible!”  
“Wanna bet?  -HEY NAYTHEN!”

 


	10. Exposure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nathan meets some of Pickles’s friends, and Murderface comes to a decision. Thinly veiled Aerosmith cameo.

—

Nathan stood before the fogged bathroom mirror in his blue jeans, smoking absently.  He unwrapped his still-damp hair from a faded orange towel, and combed it out.  It was past his bare shoulders now, and looked longer wet.  
Tonto, they’d called him.  
Nathan stuck the cigarette between his lips, separated his hair roughly into right and left halves, and twisted it to look like twin braids on either side of his face.  
Nathan stared at the image he’d created, hard.  
“…Naah.”  
He ran his fingers back through his hair, erasing the twists, and took the cigarette out of his mouth with a sigh.  
“Naythen, are you ‘bout done in there?”  Pickles called through the door.  
“No.  Why?”  
“I was wonderin’ if you would gimmie a ride down town.  There’s some friends a’mine I want ya to meet…”  
“Okay, whatever.”

Nathan looked up at the name on the lighted sign.  
“You.  Are.  Shitting me,”  he breathed.  
“Nope.  I know they’re naht your favorite band, but they’re cool once ya get to know ‘em,”  Pickles explained.  
“…Aeroscape…”  
“Yeah, I…  Naythen, are you okey?”  
“Uh, yeah.  I’m fine,”  Nathan swallowed.  
“Do you… maybe wanna go in?”  Pickles smiled, tugging on his arm.  
“I don’t have to talk to them, do I?”  
“Naht if you don’t want to,”  Pickles shrugged.  
“-I’m not letting you out of my sight,”  Nathan decided.  
Pickles felt his face flush, a sensation as quick and unexpected as the onset of any drug, and less disorienting.  No.  This time Pickles _knew_ what he looked like, and he felt as naked as a bug under a magnifying glass.  
It scared him, which just amplified everything.  
“I’m g- -um… well, c’mon then.”  
Ha-ha.   
Drag Nathan out and watch him go into star-shock.  See Shane an’ the guys again, hit up the reporters for a photo-op, maybe see some cool shit backstage an’-  
‘…I’m not letting you out of my sight…’  
…Ferget to fuckin’ breathe.

 

“Pickles baby, what’re you DOING here?”  Shane laughed, picking the redhead up in an enthusiastic hug.  
“Wouldja believe I live here now?”  Pickles grinned, when the other singer set him back on his feet.  
“No shit?  I thought-“  
“Shane, fifteen minutes!”  somebody called through the stage door.  
“Fuck man, I gotta go.  You guys want to watch from the front, or stay back here with the bigscreen?”  
“I’m good here,”  Pickles decided,  “-oh, an’ dood?-“  
“What?”  
Pickles leaned into the dark cloud of Shane’s hair.  
“-I’m clean,”  he whispered, seriously.  
“YOU’RE WHAT?!”  Shane shouted, holding Pickles at arm’s length.  
“Shane, come ON-!”  the voice from the door called, insistently.  
Shane shoved his finger in Pickles’s face.  
“Do NOT disappear.  We’ll talk later, kid.”  
Pickles nodded happily.  
Shane blew him a kiss, and went onstage.  
“What did you tell him?”  Nathan asked.  
Pickles grinned, and lied his ass off.

 

“Sho when WILL it be fixshed?”  Murderface asked, holding the phone to his ear with one shoulder as he layered mayonnaise onto his sandwich.  
Pause.  
“Lazy motherfuchkersh.  It’s only part of the forwardsh keel, right?”  
Pause.  
“Uh-huh.”  
Pause.  
“The sheals?”  
Pause.  
“That would be tha water pump.”  
Pause.  
”WELL IF CAPTAIN FUCKIN’ BLIGH-“  Murderface’s fingers fisted around the mayonnaise knife dangerously.  
Pause.  
“…He whatsh?”  
Pause.  
“NO HE DIDN’T TELL ME THAT WORTHLESS DILDO JACKOFF DINGO-FUCKSHING ASSHWIPE!!!”  
Pause.  
“…Well do you thinksh he’ll give me a reccomendashion?”  Murderface asked, dipping his knife into the mustard jar.

 

“What tha fuck ish THAT?”  Murderface demanded, as Pickles set down a large cardboard box on the end of the bed.  
Pickles looked smug, peeled off the tape, and dumped the box out all over the bed.  
It was letters.  
More letters than Murderface had ever seen all together at once in his life.  Pickles sat cross-legged on the bed, and started opening a long, pale blue envelope.  
Murderface was still staring at the pile, muttering to himself.  
“Dood, I’ve never done five months’ worth at once.  You wanna give me a hand here?”  Pickles asked.  
“You wantsh me to open yer fuckin’ FAN MAIL?”  
“You have _no_ idea how funny fan mail is,”  Pickles promised, passing Murderface a thick manila envelope.  
“You’re sherious.”  
“Open it.  Trust me, I know tha handwriting.”  
Murderface’s voyeuristic side beat out his jealousy, barely.  
He slit the side of the envelope with his boot knife, and shook out the contents.  
A handful of very explicit Polaroids fell out, followed by a pair of white lace panties, size eight.  Murderface sniffed them before he could stop himself.  They’d been worn.  
“Holy fuuuck…”  Murderface breathed,  “Are theshe ALL like that?”  
“Nah, that’s a good one,”  Pickles shrugged,  “-most of these should be like, ‘dooood, I looove you… when is your band getting back together?  This is laaame…’ and stuff like that.”  
“-Letsh get to work,”  Murderface agreed.

 

Pickles laid the six checks from Griffon Records on the table in front of him, then shuffled them together like a pack of cards, and weighed them in his hand.  
He knew a lot of things he -wanted- to do with them, but…  
Pickles took the oldest one and put it in his wallet to deposit later.  The others he stuck behind the lining in the bottom of his guitar case.

 

Pickles twisted in Nathan’s grip, burning.  
He didn’t know when the big hands at his hips had begun dragging the tempo down, but he’d fought it every step of the way, and almost succeeded.  Almost.  
Now he was just burning.  
A lithe, slippery thing with skin of gasoline, and a fire hollowing him from the inside out.  Panting, whimpering, heat without light.  
Pickles looked down and locked his eyes with Nathan’s, pleading.  
Nathan looked back through lidded eyes, and gave a small shake of his head.  He’d found something he wanted to pursue, and he was -not- about to rush this.  
…Besides, the pleading was nice.  
GOD Pickles could fight.  He’d almost struck back into his rhythm a dozen times, sweat-slick skin pouring out through Nathan’s fingers and body clenching around him until he set his teeth and saw sheets of white.    
The musician was tiring now, pushing outward against the circle of his hands, an insistent rocking that paused longer and longer to ride the dark wave beneath him.  Stamina was Pickles’s thing, not this never-ending impaled wrestling match.  
Nathan judged the moment, and slid his hands up over Pickles’s stomach, his chest, fingers brushing sides that heaved with the effort of remaining still.  Pickles felt freedom, and began to move like a runner edging off to steal a base.  
Nathan’s hands dropped to his waist, just a reminder.  
“-P-please?”  Pickles whispered, eyes shut.  
Nathan drew Pickles down to kiss his chest in silent promise, and released him.  
Pickles was with him now, if only just.  
Nathan stroked his back, shaping him like wet clay, and felt the trembling muscles in Pickles’s shoulders, tendons under strain and counter strain…  
Waiting.  
Nathan kept one hand flat on Pickles’s lower back and pressed the other to his abdomen, almost ignoring the hot, slippery shape now trapped against his palm.  He pressed his hands together, adding just that last ounce of pressure they both needed…     
Pickles choked, clenching, and trailed off in a harsh whimper.  Nathan dragged him closer and closer to the edge, one stroke at a time, until there came a wave that didn’t end, and Pickles came in a breathless shout against Nathan’s fingers.  He took Nathan down with him, drowning.

 

Nathan held Pickles loosely against his chest, and listened to the pounding blood in his ears come down.  Pickles cooled slowly, shoulders trembling a little.  He picked up a strip of Nathan’s straight hair, and twisted it between his fingers.  
“You didn’t like that, did you,”  Nathan stated.  
“I- -I did… actually…”  Pickles admitted.  His breath was light and warm against Nathan’s skin as he sighed.  
“So what’s the problem?”  
“I liked it, but… don’t do thet very often, okey?  I feel like I just drank a pitcher of Jell-O shots…”  
“Don’t worry,”  Nathan chuckled, “-I don’t think I _CAN_.”  
Pickles dropped a kiss on Nathan’s collarbone, and snuggled back down.

 

Murderface got home around sunset, and saw that the other two were still asleep.  He made coffee and microwaved something sufficiently greasy, then sat down with the newspaper that Pickles had left open on the table.  Politics, cartoons, something about a drug bust down in the Keys…  He skipped to the sports section, skimmed it, and opened ‘entertainment’.  
Far down the page from a large concert-shot of Aerospace under the spotlights, he saw a picture of his two friends backstage with Shane Tudor and Jack Perrier.  
Pickles was happy, talking, shining, sharing a joke with Aerosmith’s lead singer.  
Nathan stood just over his shoulder, arms folded.  He happened to be wearing his black gig t-shirt with SECURITY printed across it in white letters, but the unguarded look on his face as he watched Pickles was one no bodyguard would ever wear.  
Murderface looked over his shoulder at the pair tangled up asleep in the bed.  
He looked at them for a long time, then shook his head ruefully, and flipped to the classifieds.


	11. Zero Hour (aka Time to Break a little Canon…)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Out of the ashes of what might have been, /Dethlocked/ is born.

—

(The Bastard-Faster Pussycat)

The phone rang.  
Nathan snorted, and buried his face in the back of Pickles’s thick red hair.  
Pickles pushed back against him, and felt Nathan’s fingers tighten over his hand against the sheets.  
Ring… ring…  
“HEY-  TH-THIS IS FUCKIN’ NATHAN EXPLOSION AN’- _PICKLES_ -”  Nathan yelled at the phone,  -“WE- WE’RE FUCKIN’- -*BUSY* RIGHT NOW- -SO LEAVE- -US A FUCKIN’ MESSAGE, AND W- OH- -OHHH- FUUUCK!”  
Pickles clung to the arm Nathan had locked across his chest, and giggled until the tears came.  He felt so goddamn _good_ right now…  Nathan, surrounding him, inside him, a low chuckle against his ear, a furnace with a heartbeat at his back, strong hands that wouldn’t drop him…  This tingling, sparking feeling along his skin…  
The phone started ringing again.  
“FUCK OFFF!!!”  Nathan roared, swatting the phone off the nightstand with the back of his hand.

  
The battered receiver mumbled an indistinct question into the carpet.  
“Mmm… where were we…?”  Nathan purred.  
Pickles swallowed a hiccup.  
“…Aren’t you gonna like, hang that up?”  
“No,”  Nathan replied.  
Pickles felt a rising panic in his throat, choking him, but the phone… that would mean explaining…  
Nathan’s soft, thin lips pressed against his shoulder, and a flush of warmth spread over his face.  …Pickles decided to go with it.  
“NmmMM… -hic-”  
“SHH,”  Nathan smiled, against Pickles’s ear.

 

Pickles shoved his sweaty hair out of his eyes one-handed, and breathed.  
He leaned down and kissed Nathan warmly, hands cupped around Nathan’s smooth, heavy jaw.    
-hic-  
Nathan’s chest shook a little with amusement, but he finished the kiss.  
“NAT a word, boyo,”  Pickles warned.  
Nathan’s chest shook harder.  
Suddenly a low, insistent beeping started.  
Pickles stiffened, staring at the receiver on the floor as if it was a king cobra.  
“The mutherfucker _listened_ …”  he breathed, still frozen.  
Nathan looked from Pickles to the beeping phone on the carpet, and frowned.  
“Who was that?”  he asked, flatly.  
“Nobody I -hic- can’t handle,”  Pickles told him, firmly.  
“Bullshit.”  
Pickles opened his mouth, then closed it again.  
“Ya know whet?  Fuck you.  Fuck you BOTH…”   
“I’m not the one calling you at three in the morning pretending to be a wrong number,”  Nathan stated.  
-hic-  
“-Shut UP, WILL YOU!”  Pickles rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, “-gaad, I- I need to THINK, gaddamit… jest shet… UP!”  
Nathan studied Pickles’s face intently, but said nothing more for the moment.

 

Pickles stepped down off the bed, and hung up the beeping phone.  
Silence.  -hic-  
Pickles sighed, sat down cross-legged on the jeans he’d worn the day before, and picked up the receiver.  He pushed eleven numbers, and waited.  
“Hey.  Shit-eater.  -hic- Don’ even THINK about callin’ me again.”  
Pause.  
“Yea, it was wasn’t it?  Now go fuck off an’ DIE!”  
Pause.  
“Yoo- …yoo know whet?  TRY me, mutherfucker.  Seriously.  I dare you…”  
Pause.  
“Sure.  D’you wanna talk to ‘im?”  Pickles grinned, dangerously.  -hic-  
Short pause.  
“Naythen, it’s fer you,”  Pickles said, handing over the receiver.  
“Who?”  
“My brother.  Keep yer cheek off the earpiece or you’ll -catch- somethin’.”  
Nathan took the phone.  
He listened.  
“Uh-huh.”  
Pause.  
“Uh-huh.”  
Pause, punctuated by one of Pickles’s hiccups.  
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,”  Nathan told Seth, flatly.  
Pause.  
“Okay, stop talking,”  Nathan ordered,  “-if you make me listen to that Sinead story one more goddamned time, I’m gonna gut you like a deer.”  
Pause.  
“Really.”  
Pause.  
-hic-  
“LISTEN-TO-ME-VERY-CAREFULLY-YOU-CRACK-SNIFFING-SAD-EXCUSE-FOR-A-HUMAN-BEING.  I WILL COME TO YOUR HOUSE IN THE NIGHT, RIP YOUR HEAD OFF WITH A KITCHEN KNIFE, AND SHIT DOWN YOUR THROAT.  I-WANT-YOU-TO-IMAGINE-THIS-BEFORE-YOU-SLEEP.  THINK ABOUT IT EVERY-FUCKING-TIME-YOU-CLOSE-YOUR-EYES, UNDERSTAND?”   
Long pause.  
“Okay.  Sleep well.”  
Nathan hung up.  
“Sinead…?  You KNEW…?”  Pickles wavered, green eyes wide in a face gone unnaturally pale.  
“Nah, I was just jerking his chain.  …I wanna hear it from you.”  
-hic-  
Pickles shut his eyes, felt his shoulders relax, then nodded once.  
“Okey,”  he said, climbing back into bed,  “-okey, I’ll tell ya in the morning.”

 

“Whash uppp, DING-DOOONGSH!”  Murderface yelled, leaning heavily against the doorframe.  
“Whoa.  You are really trashed,”  Nathan observed.  
“I AM NATCH -DRUNK!  That ish a VICIOUSH THING TO SHAY!”  
Nathan and Pickles exchanged a glance.  Pickles hiccupped.  
“Dood, I think there’s some beer left in tha fridge.  Yoo want one?”  Pickles asked, pointing.  
“FUCK YESH.”  
Murderface staggered inside, and Nathan shut the door after him.  Murderface accepted a beer from Pickles, squinted one eye shut, and surveyed the strange array of objects set out on the kitchen counter.  
Sugar, lemon wedges, a small bottle of Angostura Bitters, five empty glasses, several bottles of booze, a jar of pickles with a spoon sticking out of it, a jar of mustard, a #2 pencil, and a steak knife.  
“Whash all thish shit?”  Murderface asked, waving his beer at it.  
“We’re tryin’ ta get rid of my hiccups.  You knoo anythin’ good fer that?”  
Murderface frowned in thought, and picked up the knife absently.  He tried to clean his nails with it, and sliced a shallow cut across his left index finger.  Murderface swore, and stuck the knife in the side of the sugar bag.  Pickles stifled a hiccup.  
“Oh yeah, hippucks, right?  Yoo, ahh…  You shtand on a shair and hold your head upshide-down while you drink,”  Murderface instructed, illustrating this in the air in front of him.  
“I’ve tried somethin’ kinda like thet already…”  Pickles said, reluctantly.  
“Well, theresh thish one with a knife-“  Murderface began, pulling the steak knife out of the sugar to demonstrate.  Sugar began collecting on the counter beneath the hole.  
“Thet’s one of the ones I’ve TRIED, dood,”  Pickles interrupted, unhappily.  
“THEN WHAT IF I SHCARE YA?”  Murderface shouted.  
Silence.  
-hic-  
“-Noope.  Good try, tho,”  Pickles sighed.  
“Thish callsh for drashtic measuresh…”  Murderface began.  
“Lets, uh, let’s try the one where you’re holding your breath upside-down again,”  Nathan suggested.  
“Eh, might as well. -hic-”  
Pickles deftly leaned forwards into a handstand, and Nathan held his ankles, steadying him.    
“You ready?”  Nathan asked.  
“That’sh funny…”  Murderface grinned, plucking at the bottom edge of Pickles’s faded ‘Skid Row’ T-shirt.  It had fallen down almost to his armpits.   
“What?  Git off me, man-!“  
“Will, knock it OFF-“  Nathan scowled, letting go with one hand to push Murderface away.  
“Cooshie-coo!”  Murderface giggled, and tickled Pickles’s side before Nathan’s hand could connect.  
Pickles’s balance was broken, and the foot Nathan wasn’t holding flailed out to connect solidly with Murderface’s mouth.   
Pickles fell on Nathan, Murderface fell back onto his hands-  
…And _screamed_.

 

Nathan put a hand on Pickles’s shoulder in the hospital visitor’s lounge.  
“-Meh?”  Pickles looked up, still half asleep.  Murderface’s blood had dried in stiff patches and spatters in the fabric of his jeans and T-shirt, and turned all but the ‘Sk’ of ‘Skid Row’ rusty-brown.  Pickles’s thin, well-toned arms were still dark to the elbow, and he looked as if he’d just killed someone in a bare-knuckle boxing match.  
“Hey,”  said Nathan.  
“Hey,”  Pickles yawned,  “-they tell yoo anythin’ yet?”  
“Yeah,”  Nathan dropped into the seat beside Pickles, and sighed heavily.  
“Thet- -thet’s not a good sound, Naythen…”  
“No.  No, it’s not.”  
“Murderface IS still alive, rite?”  Pickles asked, his voice rising.  
Nathan nodded.  
“Whet about his arm?”  Pickles asked, more calmly.  
Nathan shut his eyes.  
“They say he’s done playing bass.  When I ask the doctors what they mean by that, they just… start talking in words I can’t understand,”  Nathan admitted.  
“Oh, my GOD…”  Pickles breathed.  
“I know,”  Nathan said, tonelessly.  
“-But -but he was really GOOD-!”  Pickles protested.  
“I KNOW!”  Nathan cut him off sharply, “-I used to wish I had HALF his talent.  …And- -and now he’s just a regular jerk off.  …Like me.”  
Nathan stared at the dried blood around his own fingernails.  
“Naythen… you have a talent.  It’s just nat playin’ bass.”  
“Thanks babe, but I don’t think that counts,”  Nathan said, with a wan smile.  
“I _meant_ yer voice, douchebag,”  Pickles poked him in the side.  
“Yeah, except I’m too chickenshit to sing in public.  Look, I’ve known Will for years.  He’s not gonna take this well.”  
“…You’re callin’ ‘im ‘Will’ again,”  Pickles observed, touching a spot of dried blood on Nathan’s arm.  
“Yeah, he- -he didn’t start using ‘Murderface’ until after his grandfather’s stroke, so- -I forget sometimes,”  Nathan sighed.  
“Does he know yet?  About ‘is arm, I mean?”  
“No,”  Nathan shook his head,  “-he was still coming down off the drugs,”  Nathan paused, then looked over at Pickles quickly.  “-Are YOU okay?  Being around drugs, I mean?”  
“I was fine ‘till ya brought it up,”  Pickles grumbled.  
“Oh.  Sorry,”  Nathan said, and looked down.  
“…I’ll be all rite,”  Pickles sighed.  
Nathan nodded once and kept looking at the floor, his profile all but hidden by the blackout-curtain of his hair.  
Pickles reached down between their chairs, and took Nathan’s hand silently.  Nathan’s fingers closed tightly around his, and didn’t let go for a long time.

 

“FUCK YOU, I’m out of thish plache!”    
“Sir, you’re in no condition to-“  
“MOVE, SHWEET-TITSH!”  
Murderface marched out into the hallway in a backless gown, trailing thin tubes and gauze from his bandaged left arm like a failed Weapon-X experiment.  
Nathan intercepted him, and Pickles caught up a moment later.  
“NATHAN!  Thank tha fuckin’ devil.  Letsh get tha piss out of here.”  
“Dude, should you even be up?  Your arm-“  
“Yeah, I KNOW,”  Murderface snapped,  “-but that doeshn’t mean I’m gonna eat mashed yamsh.  That nurshe can kissh my hairy ash…”  
“Well you gotta eat somethin’,”  Pickles reasoned,  “-you lost a SHIT-load of blood.”  
“I’m NAT TAKING ADVICHE FROM YOU, RAGGEDY!”  Murderface snarled, flecking Pickles’s face with spittle.  
“FUCK!  Take a pill man, you just jammed a fuckin’ _sword_ up yer arm-“  said Pickles, wiping his face with distaste.  
“FER YOUR INFORMASHION IT WASH A SHTEAK KNIFE!”  Murderface yelled back, angrily.  
“HEY!”  Nathan interrupted, dropping one heavy hand on Murderface’s shoulder and the other on Pickles’s,  “-KNOCK-IT-OFF!”  
Nobody moved.  Even the hospital security guards stopped, fifteen feet away.  
Nathan sighed.  
“Murderface, if you fuck up your arm any more, you won’t be able to use it.  That would uh, suck.”  
“LIKE I’LL BE ABLE TA USHE IT NOW?!?”  Murderface demanded, with a slight tremor in his voice, “-NATHAN, MY ARM ISH FUCKED!  Jusht… jusht give it UP, awright…”  he trailed off.  
“You-WILL-use-that-arm-again,”  Nathan told him.    
One of the fluorescent bulbs at the end of the hall chose that moment to burn out abruptly.  
“An’ then what?”  Murderface sighed, watching a red spot on his bandage spread little by little.  
“What- What do you mean?”  Nathan blinked.  
“Dude, I shee how it ish… …I can’t live witsh you guysh anymore.”  
“What about your boat, then?  It’s gonna be fixed soon, right?”  
“Captain Carlshen fired me three weeksh ago,”  Murderface admitted, quietly,  “…an’ now shome faggot with a degree’sh tellin’ me I won’t be able to play my bass.  …What the hell am I good for now, Nathan?”  
“You’re- -you’re not REPLACEABLE.  I will never meet another Human being who sees an open convertible and yells ‘DIBS!’ with the intention of fouling the upholstery, okay?  …It’s just not gonna happen.”  
Pickles raised an amused eyebrow in Murderface’s direction.  
Murderface shrugged modestly, and winced.  
Nathan looked at his friend with concern, and pulled the huddle a little closer together.  
“Look, I don’t KNOW how this is gonna work, but YOU, ME, YOU- we’re DEATHLOCKED, understand?  -Just uh, just deal with that.”  
Murderface shut his eyes in relief, snerked through his nose a few times, and started sobbing.  Pickles reached up and stroked the once-maybe-again bassist’s oddly soft brown hair, but his eyes were on Nathan.  And his quiet, lopsided smile would have lit up a stadium.

 

“So that’s uh, onion rings and a double cheeseburger, right?”  Nathan asked, looking up.  
“-EXHTRA cheeshe,”  Murderface emphasized, from his restored position in the hospital bed.  
“Ooo, and I want ikura rolls,”  Pickles chimed in, perched on the far end of the bed.  
“…I don’t think Dimmu Burger has sushi,”  Nathan frowned, his pen poised.  
“Yeah, but the Ezo Box is like, three blocks away from there…”  Pickles pointed out, helpfully.  
“Ikur… ikear… fuck, how do you spell ‘ikura rolls’?”  Nathan asked.  
“Eh… naht sure,”  Pickles admitted.  “-I’ll go with ya.”    
“Suits me,”  Nathan smiled, standing up.  
“-Don’t ferget tha f#@&% ketchup!”  Murderface called after them.

[END]


End file.
